John Tregonwell
Sir John Tregonwell (died 1565) was a Cornish jurist, a principal agent of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell in the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
[11] In 1528-1529 he assisted Rowland Lee in the visitation of Thetford Priory,[12] and in a letter of March 1529 the Abbot of Briwerne thanked Thomas Cromwell for the trouble taken on his behalf, as Dr Tregonwell and John Wadham had informed him.
[16] He was introduced to the Privy Council as early as October 1532;[17] 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.
[18][19][20] 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.
[27] 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.
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.
The monument is an altar tomb of Purbeck marble, the chest, with quatrefoil panels enclosing plain shields, supported on a moulded plinth.
Over this, supported forward on two barley-twist columns which rise into octagonal corner turrets, is a stone canopy with a frieze of quatrefoils with pierced foliate cresting above.
From his mouth proceeds a prayer scroll or label inscribed "Nos autem gloriari oportet in cruce D'ni nostri Jesu Christi" (We ought rather to glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ) in black letter.
Below this scene is a rectangular plate with this black-letter inscription:"Here lyeth buried Syr John Tregonwell knyghte doctor of the Cyvill Lawes, & one of the maisters of the Chauncerye who died the xiiith day of Januarye in the yere .
[62] At her marriage to Tregonwell, which occurred at Puddletown on 15 June 1549, Elizabeth was the widow of Robert Martyn (died 1548)[63][64] of Athelhampton, Dorset,[65] by whom she had six sons and three daughters.
[68] Elizabeth's recusancy charges must have stood in stark contrast to her husband's reputation as a leading figure in implementing and profiting from the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Dame Elizabeth Tregonwell, Sir John's widow, made her will on 8 September 1576 and it was proved on 15 May 1584: she states in as many words that Robert Martyn had been her first husband.
