Catalogue description Estate records of St. Ives of the former Earl Cowley, K.G.

Title deeds, probate estate papers, legal and family documents

St Ives and Treloyhan Manor, Cornwall

Deposited by Waltons & Morse, solicitors, Plantation House 31-5 Fenchurch Street, London EC3M 3NN. 10 February, 1984 Accession No 3281

A note on the St. Ives estate of Earl Cowley, K.G.

The manor of St. Ives and Treloyhan belonged to the Praed family of Trevetho in Lelant. Lysons' Cornwall (1814) states that Sir Christopher Hawkins bought the manor c. 1807. Certainly he had a political interest in St. Ives by 1820 at the latest. Sir Christopher's will after his death in 1829 was disputed and the St. Ives part of the manor was put up for sale by order of the court of chancery (Hawkins v. Hawkins) and included the tithes of Lelant, Towednack and St. Ives. (Other properties of the manor in Towednack and Zennor may have been retained by the Praed family, see GHW (Praed) 48/1-2 where rentals of the Towednack and Zennor properties continue to 1840). (William Praed was one of the M.P.s for the borough of St. Ives from 1780 to 1806. Indeed the Praeds' political interest at St. Ives dates back to 1661. The St. Ives properties were sold to Sir C. Hawkins by William Praed and James Backwell Praed, 22 and 23 August 1808 and other properties were acquired in St. Ives by Sir Christopher in December 1818, September 1820 and June 1821 (X688/1 abstracts of title). On 28 May 1830 John Hinde, esq. bought the manor (or the St. Ives portion of it) for £57,200. William Pole Tylney Long Wellesley esq. bought the St. Ives properties from John Hinde for £63,000, 6 July 1830, and in that year Wellesley became a (Whig) M.P. for St. Ives. Did he buy the property for political reasons? (According to the Complete Peerage (2nd ed.) ix, 240 and W. P. Courtney, Parliamentary Representatives of Cornwall to 1833 (1889), 79, Wellesley had an interest in St. Ives politics from 1812 to 1818; the Complete Peerage states he was M.P. for St. Ives 1812-18! This is erroneous, though Wellesley had a political interest during these years. Wellesley's son the 5th Earl of Mornington succeeded him. The latter died 25 July 1863 and he was succeeded by the son of a son of the first Earl of Mornington (the father was created Baron Cowley of Wellesley (Somerset) in 1828; the son was created Earl Cowley K.G. 1866 and inherited the estates of his paternal cousin, the 5th Earl of Mornington, on the latter's death in 1863. Earl Cowley died 15 July 1884. The Cowley estates were 3,945 acres in Wilts.; 1433 acres in Essex and 522 acres in St. Ives. the principal residence of the first Earl was Draycott Park, near Chippenham, Wilts. (Complete Peerage iii (2nd ed.), 482), a property which once belonged to the Tylney family.

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