Mr. Pellew built part of Flushing, a large village on the shores of Falmouth harbour, including the present manor-house, in which he resided; but this, being leasehold property, has long ago reverted to the lord.  In 1692, he married Judith Sparnon, of Sparnon and Pengelly, in Breage, by whom he had six sons and five daughters.  Mr. Pellew maintained a high character through life, and his memory was long preserved among the older inhabitants of the village.  He died in 1721.  His son Israel married Miss Trefusis, upon whom the estate of Trefusis, which includes Flushing, was entailed, in default of more direct heirs from the then possessor; Thomas married Miss Whittaker, who was grand-daughter of Viscount Fauconberg by a daughter of Cromwell; three died unmarried; and the children of the youngest son were at length the only male survivors of the family.

Samuel, youngest son of Humphry Pellew, commanded a Post-office packet on the Dover station, to which he had been appointed through the interest of the Spencer family.  He was a man of great determination, and became in consequence the subject of a characteristic song, which was long remembered by the watermen and others at Calais.  The recollections of his family, and documents which have been preserved, show him to have been most exemplary in the duties of private life.  In 1652, he married Constance Langford, daughter of Edward Langford, Esq., a gentleman descended from a considerable family in Wiltshire.  The co-heiress of Edward Langford, Esq., of Trowbridge; married Henry Hyde, of Hinton, father of the great Earl of Clarendon, and by the marriage of her grand-daughter with James II. became the ancestor of Queen Mary and Queen Anne.  Thus connected by blood, as well as attached by principle to the exiled family, Mr. Langford joined the standard of the Pretender in 1715, and distinguished himself at the battle of Preston.  After the Rebellion was suppressed, he escaped to the west of Cornwall, and settled at Penzance.  The Pretender took an opportunity to acknowledge his services by a present of costly china.  His daughter, Mrs. Pellew, was a woman of extraordinary spirit.  Mr. Pellew’s political feelings differed widely from those of his father-in-law.  It was his practice to make his children drink the king’s health on their knees every Sunday.  He died in 1765, leaving six children, four of them boys, of whom the eldest was at that time eleven years old, and Lord Exmouth, the second, only eight.  Three years after, an imprudent marriage of the widow deprived the children of their remaining parent, and threw them upon the world with scanty resources, and almost without a friend.

It has been well observed, that a general condition of distinguished eminence is to be required to force a way to it through difficulties.  Desertion at an early age indeed subjects the individual to a most severe trial; but where there is strength to bear the discipline, it exalts the principle which it fails to subdue, and adds force to the energies which it cannot tame.  The Pellews were probably indebted for much of their success, as well as for the fearless independence which distinguished them, to the circumstances which thus compelled them from childhood to rely only upon themselves.