Family and Education

?m. Elizabeth, da. of James Erisey (d.1522).1

Offices Held

Biography

It was as Thomas Treffry ‘junior’ that the senior Member for Bodmin was returned to the Parliament of 1545, a suffix which serves to distinguish him from Thomas Treffry I. What the relationship between the two was remains unknown. The last Parliament of Henry VIII’s reign was originally to have met early in 1545 but not long after the writs of summons went out its opening was postponed until the autumn. In Cornwall the two knights for the shire were chosen at a county court held in January but the elections for the boroughs were not held until later in the year, the last being that for Bodmin on 26 Sept. The Members returned for the Cornish boroughs were young and (as far as we know) new to the House. The majority of them were connected with either the sheriff Sir Richard Grenville or the receiver-general for the duchy of Cornwall Sir Thomas Arundell, but no link between these two and either of the Treffrys is known. The lord lieutenant in the west, Sir John Russell, Baron Russell, visited Devon and Cornwall during the summer to inspect fortifications and while doing so he presumably met the elder Treffry, who commanded one of the castles overlooking Falmouth harbour, for he brought this castle’s lack of ordnance to the notice of the Privy Council. The elder Treffry had himself sat for Bodmin in the Parliament of 1529 (and perhaps in more than one of its successors), so that he could have been instrumental in his namesake’s election, with Russell probably having the final word. No other trace of the younger Treffry has been found unless he was the servant of Chancellor Wriothesley who during 1546 carried messages between Brussels and London. There is also the possibility that he was the knight of the shire returned with Henry Chiverton (the other Member for Bodmin in 1545) to the third Parliament of Mary’s reign.2

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: S. T. Bindoff

Notes

• 1. Vis. Cornw. ed. Vivian, 154-5.
• 2. C219/18C/16; LP Hen. VIII, xx, xxi.