Arundell family

The Arundell family of Cornwall are amongst the few Cornish families of Norman origin, and there are still fewer of French extraction who have for so long a period as at least five or six centuries been, like them, traceable in that county.

The Arundells of Lanherne — 'the Great Arundells' as they were styled — appear to have settled in Cornwall, about the middle of the thirteenth century, at the place so called (now the site of a nunnery), situated on the western slope of a wooded valley, lying between St Columb Major and the sea; or possibly before that time at a place in the adjoining parish of St Ervan, named Trembleath (Journal of Royal Institution of Cornwall, September 1876, pp. 285-93). A very early member of the family, Roger, was marshal of England; and according to the Exeter Cathedral 'Martyrologium,' William de Arundell, who died in 1246, was a canon of that cathedral; about the same time a Roger Arundell lived opposite St. Stephen's church in that city. In 1260 a Sir Ralph Arundell was sheriff of Cornwall; and a few years later we find a John Arundell holding lands at Efford, near Bude, and other Arundells were landowners in the eastern part of the county. Of the Sir John Arundell, the story of whose expedition against the Duke of Brittany in 1379 is recorded by the chroniclers, a separate and fuller account is given below.

His grandson, Sir John Arundell K.B., The Magnificent, K.B., The Magnificent,' was a great church benefactor (notably to the celebrated lost church of St. Piran-in-the-Sands — Perranzabulæ), and, according to his will, dated 18 April 1433, possessed no less than fifty-two complete suits of cloth of gold. He was a naval commander, and was sheriff of Cornwall four times, and M.P. for the county in 1422-3. The Arundells intermarried with most of the old Cornish families — nearly all of them now extinct — thus adding considerably to their vast possessions, until at length, in the twenty-ninth year of Henry VI, John Arundell, born about 1421, had become the largest free tenant in Cornwall, his estates being of the value of 2,000l. per annum. He was sheriff and admiral of Cornwall, and a general for Henry VI in his French wars, but was attainted in 1483.

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