Biography. 2
William St. Aubyn came from a Cornish family of gentle standing related by marriage and descent with the Grenvilles and the Arundells of Lanherne. He received a legal education at Lincoln's Inn where his kinsman, Sir Thomas Arundell, was a prominent figure, but he is not known to have practised as a lawyer. In the spring of 1554 Arundell's brother Sir John procured his own return as a knight for Cornwall and presumably he favoured St. Aubyn's election at Helston, a constituency some four miles from St. Aubyn's home. Later in the same year Queen Mary asked for the return of local men, and Helston complied by choosing him for a second time. He had no personal links with either West Looe or Camelford, but in 1555 the sheriff was Sir John Arundell and Camelford was amenable to Arundell's influence; as West Looe was until the death of Mary almost a preserve for Lincoln's Inn men, he may have owed the seat to his connexion with the inn. The Journal does not mention him. Apart from his Membership little else is known about St. Aubyn's life. As he was not re-elected after Elizabeth's accession, St. Aubyn may have died in 1558 or 1559, a victim of the epidemic current at the time: he was certainly dead by 1571 when his son was assessed at Mawgan for the subsidy.
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