The Treffrys and the Rashleighs

My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Stephanie Treffry. Her surname, Treffry is Cornish with Tre meaning farm and Ffry meaning variously, nose, hill or hill-spur. So you could translate Treffry into Hill-Spur Farm.

The Treffrys have been in Cornwall since about 1260, where they lived at a place called Treffry near Lanhydrock. In Britain they form part of the Landed Gentry, which provides the ruling classes for the local inhabitants in the shape of Squires, and Justices of the Peace. 

If you visit Fowey in south Cornwall, you will find the Treffry estate called Place. It is hard to miss as there are various Italianate turrets that tower over the hilly village. If you go to the church of St Fimbarrus, you will see that one quarter of the church is taken up with monuments to various Treffrys. The other quarter (facing the Treffry monuments) is taken up with monuments to the Rashleigh family. The placement of these monuments, which glare at each other across the central aisle of the church, provides the faintest suggestion that the two families did not always get on.

According to Grandma Steffi, the Rashleighs were actually a branch of the Raleigh family, whose most famous member was Sir Walter Raleigh (1553-1618), swashbuckling adventurer who was given a grant by Queen Elizabeth I to explore the Virginia Colony. But I am not sure she was right. True, both the Rashleighs and the Raleighs came from Devonshire. But whereas the Raleighs were landed gentry from the Yeo Valley near Barnstaple in North Devon, the Rashleighs seem to have been merchants from the Taw Valley near Wembworthy in mid-Devon. 

One Philip Rashleigh (died 1555) migrated from Devon to Cornwall, where he bought the manor of Trenant in 1545 from King Henry VIII, shortly after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The Manor of Trenant is located near Fowey, and was originally part of the Priory of Tywardreath. Philip Rashleigh’s youngest son John purchased the estate of Menabilly, also near Fowey, and his branch of the family became successful and powerful merchants during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Possibly the Treffrys did not take kindly to their new neighbors gaining such power. After all, the Treffrys had lived in Fowey at least ninety years longer than the Rashleighs. In 1457, Dame Elizabeth Treffry was responsible for repulsing a French invasion of Fowey. (My grandmother was never quite sure whether she poured molten lead on the heads of the French soldiers as they clambered up the castle walls, or boiling oil.) In any event, the Treffrys became the heroes of the day. In the previous century, a Sir John Treffry had fought with distinction at the Battle of Crécy in 1346. And so the head of the family is always called “de Cressy Treffry.”

Perhaps the real problem between the Rashleighs and the Treffrys was that the tiny village of Fowey was too small for two such powerful families!

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