Elizabeth Treffry, for whom the Elizabeth Treffry Collection on Women in Cornwall was named, was the Lady of Place House in Fowey. She is said to have led a successful defence of the major port town of Fowey against a French attack in 1457.
Still calm look’d forth the Lady
From her embattled wall;
Her presence was a power, her voice
Thrill’d like a trumpet’s call.
Meanwhile the bells kept tolling,
To rouse the country round;
And spires and turrets far away
Sent on the warning sound.
At this time, the south coast of Cornwall was frequently raided by French and Breton troops, eager to disrupt the growing maritime trade of England and Cornwall. Additionally, these attacks were intended to provoke the king, Henry VI who had been engaged in the final years of the Hundred Years' War with France, which had ended just 4 years earlier, in 1453.
Treffry's husband was absent from Fowey, attending the King's Court, when one of these raids occured. It was left to Elizabeth, the Lady of Place House, to rally local people and co-ordinate a six-week defence of Fowey town and harbour. Allegedly, she came up with the idea of repelling those rascally French pirates by pouring hot molten lead all over them.
The legend of Elizabeth Treffry was immortalised by the Cornishman Henry Sewell Stokes in the poem 'The Lady of Place', published in his 1884 book, The Voyage of Arundel and Other Rhymes From Cornwall. The poem starts by setting the scene of the bravery of Fowey sailors (also pirate raiders) who become known as the Fowey Gallants, themselves the cause of much misery for the communities on the northern coasts of Normandy and Brittany. In Sewell Stoke's telling, although a few townsmen tried to repel the French who were raging through the town, Elizabeth Treffry found the defence a sorry state of affair and sprung into action, rallying the Fowey Gallants under her banner to rid the town of the French.
Information on Treffry comes from a number of sources, including John Leland, the 16th century antiquary, who wrote:
The French-men diverse tymes assailid this Town, and last most notably about Henry the vj. tyme: when the wife of Thomas Treury the 2. with her Men repellid the French out of her House in her Housebandes Absence. Wherapon Thomas Treury buildid a right fair and stronge embatelid Towr in his House: and embateling al the Waulles of the House in a maner made it a Castelle: and onto this Day it is the Glorie of the Town Building in Faweye.
From The Itinerary of John Leland the Antiquary (1711)