FLAMANK (FLAMOKE), Gilbert (by 1508-73), of Boscarne, nr. Bodmin, Cornw.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1529

Family and Education

b. by 1508, 1st s. of John Flamank. m. settlement 29 Oct. 1537, Joan, da. and coh. of Reginald Gayer of Liskeard, Cornw. by Alice, da. of Edward Courtenay of Landrake, Cornw., 7s. 2da. suc. fa. 1535/41.1

Offices Held

Biography

Gilbert Flamank doubtless owed his place in the Parliament of 1529 to the influence of his father. John Flamank had sat for the town in at least one earlier Parliament but in 1529 he may have thought it prudent, in view of his earlier association with Wolsey, to stand down in favour of his son. Of the younger Flamank’s part in the proceedings of the Commons nothing is known, but when in 1536 the King asked that the previous Members should be re-elected he probably reappeared in the House. He is not known to have been returned again in the remaining 37 years of his life, but he could have sat in 1539 or 1542, Parliaments for which most of the Members’ names do not survive.

Flamank’s service in Parliament was his only incursion into public life. Unlike his father and grandfather he never became mayor of Bodmin and apart from his appearances as a juror at inquests or as a commissioner in lawsuits he took little part in the affairs of Cornwall, although his father-in-law held the clerkship of the crown for the county. Poverty may have prevented him from being more active for in middle life he described himself as ‘a poor gentleman ... much burdened with unavoidable charges of housekeeping and many children’. He certainly did not enjoy the best of fortune: one neighbour successfully proved his title to three of Flamank’s manors and another claimant to some of his property allegedly entered his lands, slaughtered his cattle and beat his children, putting Flamank at one time ‘in such fear of his life that he durst not walk about the premises pertaining to his mansion house’. In 1546 he was required by Richard Chamond to prepare himself to serve the King in the war against France and he may therefore have been the petty-captain who not long afterwards accompanied Chamond and 100 soldiers to Dover. Flamank died in reduced circumstances in 1573 and was buried in Bodmin church: what remained of his estates passed to his eldest son who had married a daughter of John Carminowe.2

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: J. J. Goring

Notes

  • 1. Presumed to be of age at election. J. Maclean, Trigg Minor, i. 282-3, 669.
  • 2. Maclean, i. 44, 236, 282-3; C3/62/55; 142/71/183; St.Ch.5/T22/31; Harl. 309, f. 88; LP Hen. VIII, xx, xxi.