Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

Bloyowe was usually described as ‘of Bodmin’, and while he is not known to have held property in either of the other two boroughs he represented in Parliament it seems likely that he traded in both places and used the port of Truro for his shipments overseas. He sometimes dealt in cloth, but his principal trading interest was tin, and in the 1380s he established useful business contacts with certain cutlers and pewterers of London. Merchandise did not always come into his hands in a legitimate way, however: in 1382 he was accused in the King’s bench of stealing goods worth £20, which included 12 ‘pieces’ of uncoined ‘white’ tin.1

In February 1388 Bloyowe made a quitclaim to John Breton I* of Bodmin (his fellow MP of 1384) of the house and such other property in his home town previously held by him as a feoffee on behalf of John’s father, William Breton†. He spent a large part of that year away from Cornwall: in May he appeared in Chancery in support of allegations made by another Bodmin man about assaults and robberies; in July he stood surety in the same court for two more Cornish people, and in September he represented Liskeard in the Parliament which met at Cambridge. On 28 Feb. 1390, during his third Parliament (in which he represented Truro), Bloyowe provided securities in the Exchequer on behalf of the former steward of the duchy of Cornwall, Sir John Kentwood (then knight of the shire for Berkshire), when he was granted custody of a manor forfeited by Sir Robert Tresilian†. On one or other of his visits to Westminster Bloyowe took the opportunity of presenting a petition in Chancery about the behaviour of John Moyle of Bosmaugan, one of the stewards appointed by the Crown to administer Tresilian’s estates. Moyle, he said, was ‘un des plus grauntz extortioners deinz la counte [of Cornwall]’, whose crimes included the theft of 106 tuns of wine which had been confiscated by the Crown, hunting in the King’s parks and holding the poor to ransom. Bloyowe’s personal grievance was that Moyle had conducted a vendetta against him after he had been empanelled at a judicial inquiry and had delivered a verdict in the Crown’s favour.2

Bloyowe is not recorded after his last return to Parliament in 1393.

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. SC6/818/11; KB27/483 m. 1, 485 m. 29; CPR, 1385-9, p. 489.
• 2. CCR, 1385-9, pp. 598, 642; Sel. Cases in Chancery (Selden Soc. x), 6; CFR, x. 315; C1/68/222; CIMisc. v. 6.