Family and Education

?s. of Robert Menwenick.1

Offices Held

Biography

The Menwenicks were kinsmen and neighbours of the Trelawnys of Trelawny, and it is therefore not surprising to find Roger frequently associated with members of that family. In 1389 he and John Trelawny I*, supported by other ‘evil-doers’, allegedly laid an ambush for Sir Humphrey Stafford I* at ‘Thurlaton’, Cornwall, in which they were said to have fired at him with ‘an engine called a gunne’. Then, a few years later, when he was elected to the Commons as representative for Launceston (the nearest parliamentary borough to his home at Menwenick), Trelawny, who was to sit in the same Parliament as Member for Bodmin, provided securities for his attendance. In 1413 Menwenick similarly went surety for the same John Trelawny (or perhaps his son) when returned as a knight of the shire. Seven years later, along with the Trelawnys and their kinsmen, namely Thomas Upton of Trelaske and Stephen Trenewith*, he was accused at the assizes of having illegally disseised the prior of Launceston of lands at Trelaske. Menwenick held property on the manor of Treglasta in Davidstowe as a tenant of the Trelawnys, as well as small holdings elsewhere in east Cornwall.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. Vivan, Vis. Cornw. 318.
• 2. CPR, 1388-92, p. 134; C219/9/13, 11/1; JUST 1/1531 m. 32; Cornw. Feet of Fines (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 996; Feudal Aids, i. 232, 235. Another Roger Menwenick was a portreeve of Launceston in 1431-2: SC6/814/22; R. and O.B. Peter, Hist. Launceston, 125, 128.