Family and Education

s. of John Moyle of Bosmaugan. m. by 1398, Margaret.

Offices Held

Biography

The Moyles, an old Bodmin family, first showed an open interest in the parliamentary representation of the borough when they supplied sureties for the burgesses-elect in 1397 and 1399. William himself, however, had been first recorded in 1393, when he was in possession of cables and skins illegally removed from a vessel wrecked by a storm at Mousehole. It is quite likely that he was a merchant. At the Launceston assizes of 1398 he was engaged in two lawsuits: in the first he brought an action against a blacksmith, John Tregenstock, for disseisin of a messuage and a rood of land in Bodmin, and in the second Tregenstock brought a counter-claim against him, his wife and his kinsman, Roger Moyle, for possession of a shop and a garden. It was in the court of common pleas that, in 1406 and 1408, William filed suits for trespass against two other Cornishmen.1

The Moyles held the manor of Lancarffe near Bodmin on a lease from the Whalesboroughs, and in 1414 William and his wife were party to a conveyance whereby 44 messuages and several acres of land situated there and in the widespread parishes of Landrake, St. Eval, St. Germans, Egloskerry and St. Keverne were settled on his kinsman, John Moyle. William stood surety for the attendance in the Parliament of November that year of Edward Burnebury, representing Launceston. As William Moyle ‘of Bosmaugan, esquire’ he was accused in the King’s bench in 1415 of committing a trespass, but no more is recorded about him.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

The Christian name is not entirely legible on the return, but William is more likely than Michael (as given by J. Maclean in Trigg Minor, i. 242, 278).

• 1. CIMisc. vi. 32; JUST 1/1502 mm. 203, 204d; CPR, 1405-8, pp. 133, 403.
• 2. Cornw. Feet of Fines (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 917; Maclean, i. 260; C219/11/4; KB27/616 m. 65.