228 ANCIENT MEMORIAL BRASSES OF DORSET. 



Biographical Notes. Sir John Tregonwell was Sheriff of 

 Somerset and Dorset, 1554, an< ^ came of an old Cornish family. 

 The Vicar of Milton Abbey, the Rev. Herbert Pentin, 

 writes l : 



" He matriculated at Oxford, and was admitted Licentiate of 

 Civil Law in 1522. He is also credited with having been 

 principal of a small college, now included in Christ Church, 

 Oxford. But he made his reputation by the support he gave 

 Henry VIII. with regard to the divorce of Catharine of Aragon. 

 In 1529 Dr. Tregonwell (he had then taken his LL.D. degree) 

 was one of the King's Proctors, and was present in London at 

 Cardinal Campeggio's trial of the Queen. A year later he 

 visited, with Cranmer and others, the Universities of Europe, to 

 gain their decision in favour of the divorce. In 1533 he was 

 employed as a Master of Chancery ; and in the same year he 

 acted as King's Counsel when the final sentence of divorce was 

 pronounced on Catharine. For this he received a pension of 

 4.0 per annum, and was soon afterwards made Chief Judge of 

 the Admiralty. In 1538 he was appointed a Commissioner to 

 receive the resignation of religious houses in England ; and on 

 March nth of the next year the Abbot of Milton, John 

 Bradley, B.D. (afterwards Bishop Suffragan of Shaftesbury), sur- 

 rendered Milton Abbey into his hands. A year later Henry VIII. 

 granted Sir John the Milton Abbey estate for-^i,oco and the 

 forfeiture of the ^40 pension aforesaid. In 1544 he again sat in 

 the Court of Chancery, and in 1550 he was made one of the 

 Commissioners of the Great Seal. Three years later he was 

 elected Member of Parliament for Scarborough, and received 



1 "The Brasses in Milton Abbey," in The Antiquary, for March 1904. This 

 paper also deals with some of the matrices of missing brasses, notably that of 

 Abbot "Walter (early 14th century) with a marginal Latin inscription in Lombardic 

 capitals : ABBA : VALTERE : TE : FATA : CITO : RAPVERE : TE : 

 EADINGA : DEBIT : SED : MORS : MALE : NOS : TVA : LEDIT. 



Another matrix in the Abbey, in front of the altar- steps, shows the outline of a 

 civilian in a plain gown, and his wife wearing a "butterfly" head-dress, with 

 their five sons and four daughters. 



