PENGERSICK, John, of Helston, Cornw.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Sept. 1397

Family and Education

m. by 1400, Joan, prob. s.p.

Offices Held

Portreeve, Helston 1409-10.1

Biography

The family of Pengersick took its name from a hamlet in the parish of St. Breage, near Helston, but had for long been established in the town itself. Indeed, members of the family had provided Helston with portreeves in the previous century, and a parliamentary representative in 1314. John was no doubt related to Michael Pengersick, the portreeve of 1361, who held a lease from the duchy of Cornwall of land on the surrounding manor, and to a namesake who then owned a house in St. Michael’s Street.2

In 1400 Pengersick and his wife obtained from Bishop Stafford of Exeter a licence to have an oratory in their ‘mansion’. The location of this property was not noted in the bishop’s register, but Pengersick is known to have acquired leases (at the cost of nearly £2 a year) on land on the manor of Helston by grant of the assession court of the duchy held in 1405, and it seems reasonable to assume that he lived in or near the borough he represented in three Parliaments. A few years earlier, in January 1397, he had provided securities for the attendance in the Commons of John Urban, one of the burgesses-elect for Helston, and in 1406 he made a similar undertaking for Walter Bodrygy.3 Pengersick is not known to have had any connexion with Launceston or its burgesses who, presumably, elected him to Parliament in the following year, but since he was returned at the same time for Helston it may be that the two boroughs had agreed to share his expenses.

Pengersick is last recorded at Michaelmas 1410 when rendering account at the duchy exchequer at Lostwithiel for the fee farm of the borough of Helston, this being one of the duties undertaken by the senior portreeve. It was as his widow that, in 1423, Joan Pengersick enfeoffed Richard Trelowargh, her intended heir, of all her property in Helston, notably a house in ‘Stret Wyndesore’, for which he was to pay an annual rent of 6s.4d. during her lifetime.4

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

  • 1. SC6/820/3; Duchy of Cornw. RO, ministers’ acct. 40.
  • 2. H.S. Toy, Helston, 129, 471; CAD, iv. A9921, 9949; Duchy of Cornw. RO, ministers’ acct. 17.
  • 3. Reg. Stafford ed. Hingeston-Randolph, 278; E306/2/7; C219/9/12, 10/3.
  • 4. CAD, iv. A10284.