Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/188

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Trelawny
182
Trelawny

cesses in the Low Countries and at Vigo (Postman, 14 Nov. 1702). But he still resisted the royal wishes whenever he deemed the rights of his episcopal office impugned. When in 1703 George Hooper [q. v.] was translated from St. Asaph to Bath and Wells, the see of their common friend Ken, the queen expressed her willingness to allow Hooper to retain in commendam his chantership of Exeter Cathedral and to assign its value (200l. a year) to Ken. But Trelawny objected and would not yield. In like manner he refused 7,000l. for the reversion of the manor of Cuddenbeck, as he thought it worth 2,000l. more, and would not prejudice his successor (Oliver, Bishops of Exeter, pp. 157–60).

In 1707 Trelawny was translated to Winchester, one of his last official acts as bishop of Exeter being to furnish a return, pursuant to an order in council dated 4 April 1707, of papists and reputed papists in Devon. His promotion disgusted many, Burnet complained, he being considerable for nothing but his birth and his election interest in Cornwall (Burnet, Own Time, v. 337). He succeeded Peter Mews [q. v.], and was enthroned on 21 June, and on the 23rd invested prelate of the Garter at Windsor. In his charge to the clergy of the diocese of Winchester (privately printed), Trelawny announced his devotion to protestantism and his church, and declared equal hostility to papists and the ‘furious sorts of dissenters’ (cf. Trelawne MSS. 12 Aug. 1708). In Winchester Cathedral Trelawny erected an enormous throne in the taste of his age (Gale, Cathedral Church of Winchester, London, 1715; Cassan, Lives of the Bishops of Winchester, i. 12). Since demolished, parts of it survive at Trelawne. He finished the rebuilding of the palace of Wolvesey begun by Bishop Morley, residing there and in the other two palaces of the see, at Chelsea and at Farnham Castle. One of his last acts was to place a statue of Wolsey over the gateway leading to the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1719 (Wood, History and Antiquities, 1786, pp. 452–3, gives the inscription). He was a governor of the Charterhouse, and Busby trustee of Westminster school. On 1 July 1720 he gave a handsome entertainment at Chelsea to commemorate his deliverance from the Tower (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. x. 370); and there the next year, 19 July 1721, he died. He was buried in Pelynt church on 10 Aug. (Godwin).

Trelawny married, in 1684, Rebecca, daughter and heiress of Thomas Hele of Bascombe, Devonshire. Many letters to ‘Dear Bekkie’ are preserved at Trelawne. She died on 11 Feb. 1710 (Luttrell, vi. 545). Their six sons and six daughters were: John, fourth baronet (d. 1756); Henry, drowned with Sir Clowdisley Shovell; Charles, prebendary of Winchester; Edward [q. v.], governor of Jamaica; Hele (d. 1740), rector of Southill and Landreath; Jonathan, died in infancy; Charlotte, Lætitia, Rebecca, Elizabeth, Mary, Anne.

Trelawny was through life of a convivial temper, and scandals were spread, notably by Burnet, that at times he drank wine too freely. He had a stiff temper (cf. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 47), and was a stern parent (cf. Nicholls and Taylor, Bristol Past and Present, ii. 75). In the charming ‘Love-letters of Myrtilla and Philander’ is recounted the ten years' courtship of the bishop's fourth daughter, Lætitia, by her first cousin, Captain Harry Trelawny (d. 1762), afterwards fifth baronet, whom she ultimately married; the bishop denounced his daughter's suitor as ‘one pretending boldly and wickedly, too, to rob me of my daughter so dear to me … to be treated with the deepest and justest resentments’ (cf. Trelawny Correspondence, Letters between Myrtilla and Philander, 1706–1736, privately printed, London, 1884).

The best known portrait of Trelawny, by Kneller, in the hall of Christ Church, represents him seated and wearing the robes of the Garter. Another portrait by Kneller is at Trelawne, where there is also a portrait of the bishop's wife by the same artist. In both portraits he is depicted with a strong, ruddy, clean-shaven face, and firm mouth. He was included with the rest of the seven bishops in the engraved group by D. Loggan.

Trelawny's extant writings—in the style of a ‘spiritual dragoon’—consist of a few sermons and many letters, for the most part unedited, at Trelawne. His sermon in 1702 was printed by the queen's command. His charge to the clergy of the diocese of Winchester was printed privately, with his sermon, in 1877. In Bishop Gibson's edition of Camden's ‘Britannia’ (1695) the additions for Cornwall and Devon were chiefly due to Trelawny.

[Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornub. 1878 vol. ii., 1882 vol. iii.; Boase's Collectanea Cornub. 1890; Trelawny Papers (Camden Soc.); Ellis Correspondence, 1686–8 (1829); Life by Elizabeth Strickland in Agnes Strickland's Lives of the Seven Bishops (1866); Oliver's Bishops of Exeter; Cassan's Bishops of Winchester; Plumptre's Life of Ken, 1890; Atterbury Correspondence, ed. Nichols, 1789–99; Trelawne MSS. in Hist. MSS. Comm. 1st Rep. pp. 50–2.]

J. A. T.