Memorial to Margaret Arundell (d 1691) in St Newlyna's church, St Newlyn East, bearing the Arundell of Trerice coat of arms.
The marble tablet is inscribed in Latin, and reads:
Hic
sita est
Margatita Arundell,
Johannis Baronis Arundell conjux,
Johannis Acland Baronetti filia,
Ex familia in comitatu Devonae orta
titulis diu, semper virtutibus conspicua,
quae fide et officius erga Regem,
turbulentis nupe is temporibus
imprimis emicuit
Ipsus
Erga Deum, Virum, liberos es fuit pietas:
Erga proximos, omnes merita:
Quae vix aequari, certe superari non potuerint.
Hanc
Uxores, Matres Amici, Omnes
Lugete, Celebrate, Emulari contdit.
Filium et Filiam reliquit; In hoc foelix,
quod cum unico vixisset sexu,
In utroque superesset.
Obit Anno Domini 1691, die 26 Martii."The Arundells of Trerice are said by some early authors to be descended from a junior branch of the Arundells of Lanherne, but if so the connection is too remote to be documented. Another version states that this family had their English origins during the reign of King Henry III at Caerhayes (Cornwall) or Allerford (Somerset). And in 1814 the Lysons brothers concluded "We think it extremely probable, from the frequent recurrence of the family-names of Nicholas and John, that the Arundells of Trerice were descended from a younger son of Sir Nicholas Arundell, of [Little Hempston near Totnes] in Devonshire, the elder branch of which failed by the death of his son Sir John, in the reign of Henry III". Whether any or none of these versions of the truth is correct, the Arundells acquired Trerice in the mid 14th century when Ralph Arundell married Jane, sole heir of Matthew de Trerise and his wife Alice, daughter of Lord Flamoke. Matthew's mother had been a Lansladron, and in later centuries the Arundells quartered their arms with those of Lansladron.
Ralph Arundell was succeeded at his death in c.1369 by his son Nicholas Arundell, who was apparently still a minor. Nicholas is recorded to have been abducted from his guardian John Tynton by William Lambourn and his wife Joan, but the abductors seem to have been relations, since in 1372 they were living at Trerice and applied for a licence for have a chapel in the house. Nicholas' son, Sir John Arundell, married Jane Durant in the early 15th century, and she brought him the manor of Ebbingford (otherwise Efford) at Bude as part of her dowry, and this became the family's main home for some time. In the 1420s and 1430s, Sir John was the household steward of the Earl of Huntingdon, Vice-Admiral of Cornwall, and a Member of Parliament. His son, Nicholas Arundell, again married well and by his wife, Joan St. John, he left a son, another Sir John Arundell (c.1428-71), with whose career we are at last on firmer ground, and with whom the genealogy below begins. He was evidently a courtier as he was made a Knight of the Bath in 1465. It was this Sir John who moved the family seat from Efford to Trerice, reputedly because he had been warned in a prophecy by a shepherd who he convicted of an offence in his judicial capacity that 'when upon the yellow sand, thou shall die by human hand', and he wanted to live further from the beach. However, he did not escape his fate, for while Sheriff of Cornwall in 1471 he was ordered to recapture St. Michael's Mount (which the Earl of Oxford had seized for the Lancastrians), and in attempting this he was killed in a skirmish on the sands in Marazion Bay.
The heir to Trerice was his infant son, Sir John Arundell (c.1468-1512), kt. who, like his father, was made a Knight of the Bath and died fairly young, leaving as heir Sir John Arundell (c.1495-1560), kt., who was the first of two leading figures in the history of the family. He played an important part in Cornish affairs for some fifty years, but was also fairly prominent at Court and as Vice-Admiral of the western seas was involved in combatting piracy and the threat of French and Spanish invasion. Perhaps his seamanship also helped him to chart a safe course between the turbulent seas of Protestant change and the submerged rocks of Catholicism tradition during the Reformation. Despite his involvement in the suppression of the Pilgrimage of Grace and in countering opposition to Protestant reform in the south-west under Edward VI, the Catholic Queen Mary seems to have had no reservation about employing him in the 1550s and indeed he was detailed to provide a generous welcome to Philip of Spain should he land in Cornwall when he came to England for the royal marriage in 1554.
Sir John married twice, firstly to Mary Beville of Gwarnack near Truro and secondly to Julian, the daughter of James Erisey, and his death in 1560 triggered a protracted inheritance dispute. The only son of his first marriage, Roger Arundell (d. 1558?) who was later said to have been insane, predeceased his father but left an infant son, John Arundell (1557-1613) who in the normal course of things should have succeeded to Trerice. However, the death of Roger left Sir John in the position where he had full power to dispose of his estates. Sir John may have been concerned that his eldest son's madness was hereditary, or have been concerned about the implications of displacing his large second family in the interest of an infant heir. The position was further complicated by the fact that his eldest son by his second wife, Robert Arundell (c.1528-80), was born before his parents' marriage and was also a bad character. At all events Sir John decided to settle Trerice and Efford on the adult eldest legitimate son of his second marriage (John Arundell (c.1534-80), while making provision for his grandson and for Robert by leaving them Gwernack and the Menadarva estate at Camborne respectively. Robert, as we have seen, accepted the position and went on to found another gentry family. The younger John keenly felt that he had been cheated of his birthright, and throughout his life made sporadic if spirited attempts to recover it.
The chosen heir, John Arundell (c.1534-80), seems to have been a kind and considerate family man for whom public office was a duty to be observed rather than a career to be embraced. In about 1565 he struck a deal with his nephew’s guardian, the Earl of Arundel, surrendering two large manors to the boy, in return for which the latter renounced his rights to the remaining estates. This settlement was confirmed in 1579, when a reluctant Arundell of Gwarnack additionally conceded that, if he died childless, most of his lands would descend to his uncle’s heirs. No doubt feeling that he had put the dispute to bed, in about 1570-73 John turned his attention to the rebuilding of Trerice with up-to-date decoration and some of the finest plasterwork of its date in the south-west.
John Arundell died in September 1580 leaving his three-year-old son, Sir John Arundell (1576-1654), the newly rebuilt seat of Trerice, over 2,000 acres in Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset, and a reversionary interest in a further 3,050 acres held by the Gwarnack branch of the family. The wardship of his heir was purchased from the Crown by family trustees, including his brother-in-law Richard Carew. Sir John Arundell (1576-1654) was the second major figure in the family, and from an early age he showed signs of ability; he was first elected as an MP (for the local borough of Mitchell) shortly before coming of age in 1597, and he was already active in Cornish administration when he became MP for Cornwall four years later. Nevertheless, his inheritance remained under threat, as Arundell of Gwarnack, who had never accepted the legality of the 1579 settlement, persistently sued his cousin in pursuit of his own claim to the entire estate. In 1610 the inheritance issue came to a head again, when John Arundell of Gwarnack obtained a ruling in his favour in the Court of Common Pleas. Sir John responded vigorously, and used his position in Parliament to obtain a private Act setting aside that judgement and confirming the 1579 settlement. That should have been the end of the matter, but when Arundell of Gwarnack died childless in June 1613, he bequeathed his claim to his nephew, Richard Prideaux of Thuborough (Devon) and his son Jonathan, who resumed the battle in the courts. In order to secure the additional Gwarnack lands to which he was entitled, Arundell obtained a Chancery decree in May 1615, whereby he undertook to pay the Prideauxs £550 to abandon their pretensions. This agreement was not finally implemented until 1622, and even then Arundell remained uneasy, and in 1637 he paid Jonathan Prideaux’s heir a further £80 to forestall the revival of any Prideaux claim to the Trerice estates.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Sir John was in his mid-60s but he took up arms for the King alongside his four sons (the eldest of whom was to die in the fighting). Being too old for service in the field, he was made Governor of Pendennis Castle, which he held for the King until the very end of the first Civil War.
The castle was besieged from March 1646 but he held out until mid August, when starvation and the clear lack of any prospect of relief obliged him to surrender. The Arundell estates were seized by Parliament, and were initially made over to one of his creditors, who allowed him to remain in occupation on easy terms, but he was repeatedly arrested on suspicion of conspiracy. In March 1651 he and his son Richard were fined £10,000, though this sum was reduced to £2,000 in February 1654, and the full estates were only recovered by his heir, Richard Arundell (c.1616-87), after the Restoration.
When King Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 a great many people felt they had a claim on his purse and patronage: all those families who had fought for the Royalist cause and sacrificed lives or been fined by Parliament; all those who had patiently financed the royal exile; and those who had engineered the Restoration. At the same time, Charles knew that in order to avoid re-igniting the Civil War there was a limit to the extent to which he could dispossess people who had purchased confiscated estates during the Commonwealth years, or fine Parliamentarian supporters, to meet these claims. As a consequence, most Royalists got little reward for their loyalty and little compensation for their losses. Against this background, the Arundells did better than most, even allowing for the fact that their sacrifice had been greater than most and their loyalty constant. Richard Arundell had been promised a peerage by Charles I in 1646 and this was delivered in 1665 (the barony of Arundell of Trerice); and in redemption of another pledge he was also restored to his father's Governorship of Pendennis Castle for life in 1662. He held positions at Court, including Master of the Horse to the dowager Queen Henrietta Maria, and he was also given cash; we know of a pension of £1,000 a year and a one-off payment of £3,000 in 1670, and a hostile pamphlet alleged a total of £20,000 in 'boons'. His younger brother Nicholas secured a lucrative position as farmer of the excise for Cornwall in 1662 but only enjoyed it for three years before he died in 1665. When Richard died in 1687 he was succeeded by his only son, John Arundell (1649-98), 2nd Baron Arundell of Trerice, who was an MP before he succeeded to the title and also Master of the Horse to another dowager, Queen Catherine of Braganza, 1687-94. In 1675 he married Margaret Acland of Columb John (Devon), who brought him a dowry of £8,000. Although she died in 1691, it was as a result of this marriage that the Trerice and Efford estates passed in 1802 to the Acland family.
The 2nd Baron and Margaret Acland had two sons, of whom the younger, Richard Arundell (1696-1758), was clearly a chip off the old block and went on make a good deal of money from Court and public appointments, and to have the same sort of reputation for being beloved of his friends as his great-great-grandfather, almost 200 years earlier. The elder son, John Arundell (1678-1706), 3rd Baron Arundell of Trerice, who inherited the title and estates in Cornwall, was less obviously in the family tradition. He died very young, at 28, but had shown by then no sign of taking on a role in public life. He did marry and produce a son, but when he died he required that he should be buried in the clothes he died in, and forbade anyone to uncover his body between his death and burial, which somehow suggests morbid preoccupations.
His only son and heir, John Arundell (1701-68), 4th Baron Arundell, was just four when his father died, and may later have been estranged from his mother. Some sources refer to him as the "Wicked Lord Arundell" because of a story that a female servant at Trerice committed suicide after he had debauched her and then abandoned her when he discovered she was pregnant. In 1721, when it was fairly clear that his uncle Richard would not produce any male heirs and that producing an heir to the title and estates was therefore down to him, he married a woman twenty years his senior who was at the very end of her childbearing years, and they did indeed have no children. His motivation may have been financial, as she was a considerable heiress, but most 18th century peers would probably have put lineage before lucre. Some of the funds she brought him were invested in landscaping works at Trerice, but the couple seem to have lived mostly at Henbury House, Sturminster Marshall (Dorset) which they either acquired or inherited; certainly they were both buried at Sturminster Marshall rather than at Newlyn East, the traditional burying-place of the Arundells of Trerice."
SOURCE - (
visit link)