While I can’t conclusively prove it at this stage, I believe a very strong candidate for your William Lanyon is William 4th son of Richard Lanyon (c.1506-1592) and Margaret Treskillard (c.1510-1579), and therefore the younger brother of the John Lanyon who married Phillipa Millaton.
I did some research on that William some years ago, and believe him to be the same William Lanyon who is buried at Morvah in 1619.
Hi Gandolf,
The difficulty in reconstructing this family is a difficulty that one finds with many other early modern Cornish families, namely that the same given names tend to be used over and over again, including in collateral branches, making it difficult to know who is who. In particular, trying to work out the different Williams in the family.
There were at least three different William Lanyons recorded in the visitation pedigree of the family
and who would have been living in the late 1500s:
William (II), son of William (I) Lanyon and a younger brother to the Richard Lanyon who married Margaret Treskillard,
William (III), fourth son of the above Richard,
William (IV), son of John Lanyon and Philippa Myliton and grandson of the above Richard.
Then there are various mentions of Williams in other records such as parish registers, land deeds and probate.
Henderson in his calendars describes a deed dated to 1583 in which Richard Lanyon and his son and heir John granted Tregaminion in Morvah to a William Lanyon who is described in the deed as being a younger son of Richard. In other words, the William (III) named above. Hence the Morvah Lanyons are a branch of the Gwinear Lanyon family, and we now know where the point of the connection was.
I therefore agree it would appear quite possible that this is the same William who was buried in Morvah in 1619 as you propose.
At the time I thought his wife was likely to have been the Aves (Avis) Lanyon buried at Morvah in 1614 since she is the ONLY other Lanyon recorded as being buried at Morvah between 1550 and 1650. However, on reviewing it tonight, it now looks like I was wrong and that William’s wife (and presumed mother of his children) was actually Elizabeth Kearne (alias Tresilian).
Subsequent to my writing the above I see from a later portion of your post that you already know about this Tregaminion grant! However I think this William, while related, is a different person to the husband of Elizabeth.
Thanks for drawing my attention to Elizabeth “Trefulyan” being a Kearne alias Tresilian. I have now discovered her in Vivian, page 269, where she is shown as being the wife of a William Lanyon.
I think it is very unlikely though that William (III) is the man who married Elizabeth "Trefulyan" at Breage in 1572. This is because there is another candidate for the groom in that marriage, a William (V) at Breage, who does
not appear in the visitations.
We know of him through two other deeds described by Henderson, both of which are dated to 1581. In the first deed, William Lanyen of Tregonen in Breage gent and his son and heir William Lanyen Jr released certain land in St Erth parish to William Paynter gent. In the second deed, the land is in the same location within St Erth parish and the parties are named as William Paynter gent, William Lanyen senior gent and his wife Margaret and William Lanyon Jr gent and his wife Elizabeth. I think it is clear that we are talking about the same Williams in each instance.
As William Lanyon Jr is said in the second 1581 deed to be married to an Elizabeth, I believe that the William who married Elizabeth "Trefulyan" in 1572 is this William Lanyon junior, husband of "Elizabeth" and son of William Sr of Breage.
The visitation pedigree does not show any William Lanyon son of William Lanyon in this time frame. I do not think that this William junior of 1581 can be the son of William (III) either. Since Francis Lanyon, elder brother to William (IV) was married in 1584 as per Vivian, and since William (III) was a younger brother to Francis’ father John, I think it is impossible that William (III) could be the father of a William (V) who married Elizabeth "Trefulyan" in 1572, because Francis as the eldest son of another eldest son is most unlikely to have had a younger cousin (i.e. a father’s younger brother’s son) marrying 12 years before he himself did.
However there is another possibility: that the William Lanyon senior of the 1581 deeds is the same person as the William (II) named above. Now I know that William (II) is shown by Vivian with only one child, who died young in 1563. However the surviving christening records at Breage did not begin until 1597, and so I don’t see the lack of other children to this William in the visitation pedigree as being a problem. What I think the pedigree by Vivian
does reveal is that William (II) is the right age to have been the father of a man who married in 1572, and/or the father of a daughter (i.e. Mary Borlase) who married in 1576.
Vivian does also give another name for the wife of William (II), namely “Tamson” who died in 1563 as per the Gwinear parish register. At first glance this might appear to be a bar to William (II) being the William senior of 1581, since the latter's wife is named "Margaret". However Vivian also shows both Richard and William (II) as being the sons of a William (I) and his wife "Thomasine". I suspect therefore that the burial in question is not the burial of a supposed wife of William (II), but rather the burial of his mother, viz. Thomasine Lanyon nee Tregian, the wife of William (I).
What is particularly interesting about the William Lanyon-Elizabeth Tresilian marriage is that it seems clear that the Lanyon family was regularly marrying into minor gentry families at that time. Could therefore Margaret, the wife of William (II), also have been of a gentry family? I suspect that her marriage to William (II) is likely to have been the start of the subsequent association of members of the extended Lanyon family with Breage, given that there are
no Lanyons shown there in the published Tudor subsidies of the early to mid-1500s.
In the 1569 Cornish muster, there is only the one William Lanyon shown at Breage. This man therefore must be the William senior of the 1581 deeds, and William Jr evidently was not yet of age in that year, despite marrying only three years later.
I would therefore propose the following reconstruction of this portion of the Lanyon family:
Generation one: William (I) Lanyon who marries Thomasine Tregian who dies in 1563,
Generation two: includes sons Richard Lanyon who married Margaret Treskillard and William (II) Lanyon of Tregonen in Breage who married Margaret, surname not known,
Generation three: includes John Lanyon (son of Richard) who marries Philippa Milliton, his younger brother William (III) Lanyon who is granted Tregaminion in Morvah, and their first cousins William (V) Lanyon (son of William (II) above) who marries Elizabeth Tresillian in 1572, his sister Mary who marries Walter Borlase in 1576, and some other siblings,
Generation four: includes John’s sons Francis and William (IV) Lanyon, and their second cousins the children of Walter Borlase.
Trencrom