| Notes |
- Knight of the shire for Scarborough, Oct 1553.
From the History of Parliament:
John Tregonwell's parentage has not been established and may have been humble. Between 1512, when he appears as a student of civil law at Oxford, and 1530, when he was succeeded as principal of Peckwater Inn by William Petre, his progress at the university was scarcely affected by demands from outside it, but his entry into practice at the court of Admiralty was quickly followed by his employment by the crown in the matter of the divorce and other, chiefly diplomatic, tasks. In April 1533 he supervised the proceedings of convocation and a year later his expectation of the mastership of the rolls was dashed by Cromwell's appropriation of the office, but by 1535 he was principal judge in the Admiralty as well as a master in Chancery. He played a part in the proceedings against Sir Thomas More, Anne Boleyn and the rebels of 1536.
Tregonwell is chiefly remembered for his part in the dissolution of the monasteries. In April 1533 he had been instrumental in the election of an abbot of Tewkesbury, and he was one of the three men, Cromwell being another, to whom a draft commission to visit monasteries and churches was addressed before the close of 1534. After his visitation of Oxford university in September 1535 Tregonwell's work lay mainly in the south-west, including his own county. He has been called perhaps the most reliable and the most independent of the visitors, one who was prepared to plead for a house which he judged deserving, but he was also among the first to compete for the spoils.
From Wikipedia (accessed 18 July 2022):
He was introduced to the Privy Council as early as October 1532; and with the appointment of Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury in March 1533, Tregonwell rapidly became a useful figure in affairs of state. With Thomas Bedyll, John Cockes and Richard Gwent, he was one of the four witnesses summoned by Cranmer in March 1533 to hear his private protestation on the eve of his Consecration. At the Convocation of April 1533, Dr Tregonwell appeared as proctor for the King in the matter of the royal divorce, to require that their decisions concerning two questions should be brought into written form and published. On 8 May Cranmer held court in the Lady Chapel of Dunstable Priory, with the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester and with several doctors of law, Dr Tregonwell among them, as counsellors in the law for the King's part. Lady Katherine was called but did not appear, and was held to be contumacious: examination of the evidence and witnesses proceeded. On 23 May at Dunstable, Cranmer declared the marriage dissolved, and Tregonwell's short message went at once to Cromwell at Westminster. He was soon afterwards granted an annuity of £40 for life.
With Chancellor Audeley, Secretary Cromwell, Almoner Fox and Richard Gwent, he signed the two treaties of peace of 1534 with Scotland on behalf of King Henry. He also took part in the proceedings against the London Carthusians, against Sir Thomas More, and against Anne Boleyn. He became a Master in Chancery by 1536, and was appointed to receive petitions in the Lords in parliaments commencing in 1536, and in that year held a commission to receive and examine rolls.
Tregonwell's great business was, however, his agency in the dissolution of the monasteries. His main part lay in taking surrenders. His correspondence, of which there is less than of some of the other visitors, gives a more favourable impression of him than of Legh or Layton, and he adopts a firmer tone in writing to Cromwell. He visited Oxford University in 1535; otherwise his work lay mainly in the south and west of England. With Dr Layton, Dr Legh and Dr Petre he was active in the interrogations of prisoners taken in the Pilgrimage of Grace, including George Lumley and Nicholas Tempest, and he was important enough for Cromwell to talk about him as a possible Master of the Rolls. He became a master in chancery in 1539, was chancellor of Wells Cathedral from 1541 to January 1543, a commissioner in chancery in 1544, and a commissioner of the great seal in 1550.
In Queen Mary's accession, in 1553, she appointed judges led by Tregonwell, with William Roper, David Pole, Anthony Draycot and others, to examine the claim of Edmund Bonner that his deprivation (under Edward VI) as Bishop of London had been invalid. In the reversal of religious policy, the reinstatement of the deprived Catholic bishops was for Mary an important component in her reform. Dr Tregonwell himself pronounced the definitive sentence in Bonner's favour, resulting in his restitution, on 5 September 1553, thereby overturning the former sentence of Cranmer, and laying the fault of the injustice upon the distinguished judges who had approved it. Tregonwell was knighted on 2 October 1553.
He was Member of Parliament for Scarborough in the parliament of October 1553, and, though he held a prebend, there was no objection to his return, doubtless because he was a layman. Alexander Nowell was ejected from parliament, and Tregonwell was one of the committee which sat to consider his case. In 1555 he was a commissioner on imprisoned preachers.
From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
During Edward VI's reign, Tregonwell was still active in legal affairs and as a justice of the peace in Dorset. His name appears on a shortlist of three from which the sheriff of Dorset and Somerset was pricked. His career appears to have been revitalized in Mary's reign: on her accession he was one of the first to be knighted (on 2 October 1553), he was MP for Scarborough in her first parliament, a member of the commission examining Bishop Bonner's appeal against deprivation in Edward's reign, sheriff of Dorset and Somerset in 1554, and a House of Lords receiver of petitions in four parliaments. In February 1554 he was sworn one of the king and queen's council. Tregonwell's social position is exemplified by the licence he received to retain thirty gentlemen or yeomen in his household.
It is probably Tregonwell's conservative religious sympathies that account for his absence from important office after Elizabeth's accession, although he continued as a justice of the peace in Dorset. He made his will in December 1563, with an invocation for the prayers of the 'most glorious and blessed Virgin Mary', and, after apparently a lengthy illness, died at Milton Abbas on 13 January 1565, where he was buried in the old abbey church.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
Bef 1487 - 1565 (> 78 years)
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