Family and Education

b. 1640, 1st s. of Thomas Trenchard of Wolveton, Charminster, Dorset; bro. of Henry Trenchard and John Trenchard. educ. Exeter, Oxf. 1659; M. Temple 1659; travelled abroad (France) 1660. m. 1665, Anne, da. of Thomas Erle of Charborough, Dorset, 1s. (posth.) 1da. suc. fa. 1657.1

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Dorset 1661-9, j.p. 1668-May 1670, June 1670-d.; freeman, Poole 1670.2

Biography

The Hampshire estates of the Trenchards descended to them in unbroken male line from the time of Henry I. One of them represented that county in 1449, but the next generation moved to Dorset after marriage to an heiress. Trenchard’s grandfather was returned for his county in 1621, and again as a recruiter in 1645. But Trenchard’s father, who had sat for Bridport in the Short Parliament, seems to have been less firm in his parliamentary convictions; he was reported to have submitted to the King in 1643, and was nominated by the neutralist Clubmen as one of their envoys to Parliament in 1645. He succeeded to a heavily indebted estate in 1655, but died two years later.3

In arranging for Trenchard to leave for France in the spring of 1660, his guardians, of whom John Bulkeley was the chief, were no doubt following a normal plan of education; but the date of his pass (24 Apr.) does suggest an absence of enthusiasm for the imminent Restoration. As an opponent of the Conventicles Act, he was omitted from the commission of the peace in May 1670, but restored a month later. He protected the nonconformist vicar of Charminster, Samuel Hardy, from civil and ecclesiastical authority; and in return it was Hardy, then vicar of Poole, who secured his patron’s election later in the year for the borough, about six and a half miles from Lytchett Matravers. An active Member of the Cavalier Parliament, though for part only of one not very eventful session, Trenchard was added to the committee of elections and privileges, and appointed to 14 others, none of which was of much political significance. He was naturally concerned with the bills relating to the estate of his predecessor (Sir) John Fitzjames, and to the forgeries of which George Pitt had been a victim. On 28 Mar. 1671, he was teller with another Dorset Member, John Tregonwell, against a successful amendment to the customs bill to restrict corn bounty to exports in English ships. Here Trenchard was surely more conscious of his interests as a landowner than of his duties as representative of a seaport. He died on 20 Nov. 1671, and was buried at Charminster.4

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: John. P. Ferris

Notes

• 1. Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 326-7.
• 2. Poole archives, B17.
• 3. A. R. Bayley, Civil War in Dorset, 110; Hutchins, i. p. xix; Northumberland (Alnwick) mss 551, f. 42.
• 4. CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 575; PCC 257 Wootton; D. R. Lacey, Dissent and Parl. Pols. 451; Hutchins, i. 56; ii. 556.