Arundell, Sir John, of Trerice 1495-1561, knight, twice sheriff of Cornwall, and vice-admiral of the west under Henry VII and Henry VIII, was esquire of the body to the latter king, and known as Jack of Tilbury. He was knighted at the battle of Spurs in 1513; and in 1520 the king entrusted him with the preparations for the reception of the emperor at Canterbury. In 1523 he captured, after a long sea fight, a notorious Scotch pirate, Duncan Campbell, who had for some time scourged our coasts. The Duke of Norfolk wrote shortly afterwards to Sir John Arundell, requesting him to bring his prisoner to the king's presence, and thanking him in the king's name for his valiant courage and bolde enterprise in the premises. It was apparently to the same Sir John Arundell that Henry VIII wrote in 1544 requesting his attendance in the wars against the French king—an order which was, however, countermanded in order that Arundell with his servants, tenants, and other within his rooms and offices, especially horsemen, might be held in readiness for other services. In the following reign he was vice-admiral of the king's ships in the west seas; and in 1553, when he was sheriff of Cornwall, Queen Mary wrote requiring that he, with his friends and neighbours, should see the Prince of Spain most honourably entertained, if he fortuned to land in Cornwall. By his first wife, a coheir of Bevil, he had two children, Roger, who married a Dinham, and Katherine, who married a Prideaux. By his second wife, an Erisy, he had a son John, who succeeded him at Trerice, and was, like him, sheriff of Cornwall, whose due commendation Carew desired not to give because another might better deliver than myself, who touch him as nearly as Tacitus did Agricola. Sir John Arundell was born in 1495, died in 1561, and is buried at Stratton Church, Cornwall, where there is a monument to his memory.

Sources:
     Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, iv. 172
     Archæological Journal, viii. 94 (1851).

Contributor: W. H. T. [Walter Hawken Tregellas]

Published: 1885