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‘Towards God religious, towards us most faithful’: The Paulet Family, the Somerset Gentry and the Early Tudor Monarchy, 1485–1547

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Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c.1400-1688

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Abstract

This chapter explores three concentric elements within the political structure of early Tudor England: the individual in society, the county and, finally, the broader ‘Tudor State’. These features will be examined in a biographical manner through the lives and careers of two members of the same Somerset gentry family: Sir Amias Paulet (c. 1457–1538) and his son, Sir Hugh (c. 1500–73), of Hinton St George, near Crewkerne in the south of the county. What stands out about the Paulets is their continuity within the county from the beginning of Henry VII’s reign to the end of Henry VIII’s. In many ways, the Paulets were a typical gentry family, with father and son experiencing similar careers. Amias and Hugh were both lawyers at Middle Temple, London, with Amias acting as treasurer in 1520 and 1521; both were involved in county administration as both sheriff and justice of the peace (JP); both were members of parliament (MPs); both were involved as soldiers during England’s wars with France (in 1512–13 and 1544–46 respectively) and in suppressing rebellions in the south-west (in 1497 and 1549 respectively); finally, both married well into prominent and wealthy south-west families. But what marks the family apart is their ubiquity within county affairs and their political progress throughout the entire Tudor period; they navigated their way through particularly troubled waters but seemed to weather each storm and ultimately profited from their loyalty to their monarch.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A. R. Ingpen, The Middle Temple Bench Book: Being a Register of Benchers of the Middle Temple from the Earliest Records to the Present Time, with Historical Introduction (London, 1912), pp. 57, 128, 360, 416. For Sir Hugh Paulet, see pp. 363, 416.

  2. 2.

    J. Loach, Edward VI, ed. G. W. Bernard and P. Williams (New Haven and London, 1999), pp. 5–6.

  3. 3.

    J. M. Rigg, ‘Poulett, John, Fourth Baron and First Earl Poulett (c. 1668–1743), politician’, in ODNB, available at: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-2263414 (accessed December 2018).

  4. 4.

    A. Bethell, ‘Sir Amias Paulet’, Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 17 (1871), 63–72.

  5. 5.

    C. A. H. Franklyn, A Genealogical History of the Families of Paulet (or Pawlett), Berewe (or Barrow), Lawrence and Parker (Bedford, 1963), p. 60; TNA, C 136/66/8; C 142/61/14; David Ashton’s record of ‘Deneland’, rather than Denebaud, is a mistake which seems to have been repeated from the original ODNB entry for Amias Paulet: D. J. Ashton, ‘Paulet, Sir Amias (c. 1457–1538)’, in ODNB, available at: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-21611 (accessed 14 December 2018).

  6. 6.

    C. G. Winn, The Pouletts of Hinton St George (London, 1976), p. 16.

  7. 7.

    I. Arthurson, ‘The Rising of 1497 – A Revolt of the Peasantry?’, in People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages, ed. J. T. Rosenthal and C. Richmond (Stroud, 1987), pp. 5–9.

  8. 8.

    Ashton, ‘Paulet, Sir Amias’.

  9. 9.

    A. Collins, The Peerage of England: Genealogical, Biographical and Historical, 9 vols. (London, 1812), iv, p. 3.

  10. 10.

    L. Gill, Richard III and Buckingham’s Rebellion (Stroud, 1999), p. 176.

  11. 11.

    M. A. Havinden, ‘The Resident Gentry of Somerset in 1502’, Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 139 (1998), 1–15; J. R. Lander, Crown and Nobility, 1450–1509 (London, 1976), p. 272; C. Rawcliffe, The Staffords: Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham, 1394–1521 (Cambridge, 1978), p. 41; BL, Harleian MS 283, f. 70.

  12. 12.

    Winn, Pouletts of Hinton St George, pp. 16–17; S. W. B. Harbin, ‘The High Sheriffs of Somerset’, Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 108 (1964), p. 38.

  13. 13.

    W. A. Shaw, The Knights of England: A Complete Record from the Earliest Times to the Present Day of the Knights of All the Orders of Chivalry in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of Knights Bachelor, 2 vols. (London, 1906), ii, p. 25.

  14. 14.

    I. Lancashire, Two Tudor Interludes: The Interlude of Youth; Hick Scorner (Manchester, 1980), pp. 58, 122–3 (lines 297–305).

  15. 15.

    D. J. Ashton, ‘The Tudor State and County Politics: The Greater Gentry of Somerset, c. 1509–1558’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1998), pp. 34–5; G. Cavendish, Thomas Wolsey, Late Cardinal: His Life and Death, ed. Roger Lockyer (London, 1962), pp. 31–3.

  16. 16.

    Ashton, ‘The Tudor State’, pp. 3–4, 13–16.

  17. 17.

    T. Thornton, Cheshire and the Tudor State, 1480–1560 (Woodbridge, 2000), p. 175.

  18. 18.

    P. Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (London, 1990), pp. 2–3.

  19. 19.

    Cavendish, Thomas Wolsey, pp. 32–3.

  20. 20.

    J. Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), pp. 55–7.

  21. 21.

    S. Gunn, ‘The Courtiers of Henry VII’, EHR 108 (1993), 23–49; G. R. Elton, ‘Tudor Government: The Points of Contact, III. The Court’, TRHS, 5th series, 26 (1976), 211–28.

  22. 22.

    D. Starkey, ‘Henry VI’s Old Blue Gown: The English Court Under the Lancastrians and Yorkists’, The Court Historian 4 (1999), pp. 1–2.

  23. 23.

    Sir John Fortescue, On the Laws and Governance of England, ed. S. Lockwood (Cambridge, 1997), p. 129; C. Given-Wilson, ‘The King and the Gentry in Fourteenth-Century England: The Alexander Prize Essay’, TRHS, 5th series, 37 (1987), 87–102.

  24. 24.

    Guy, Tudor England, p. 165; C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England, 1360–1413 (New Haven and London, 1986), p. 219.

  25. 25.

    R. Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 325–33.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., pp. 16, 226–72.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., p. 329.

  28. 28.

    J. R. Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture, 1453–1509’, Historical Journal 4 (1961), 119–51.

  29. 29.

    G. L. Harriss, ‘Political Society and the Growth of Government in Late Medieval England’, Past & Present 138 (1993), 28–57.

  30. 30.

    D. Luckett, ‘Crown Patronage and Local Administration in Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset and Wiltshire, 1485–1509’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1992), p. 157; S. Gunn, ‘Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex (1472–1540)’, in The Tudor Nobility, ed. G. W. Bernard (Manchester, 1992), p. 168.

  31. 31.

    TNA, E 101/516/24.

  32. 32.

    Luckett, ‘Crown Patronage and Local Administration’, p. 103.

  33. 33.

    D. Luckett, ‘Crown Patronage and Political Morality in Early Tudor England: The Case of Giles Lord Daubeney’, EHR 110 (1995), pp. 582–3, 589.

  34. 34.

    E. Chisholm Batten, ‘Henry VII in Somersetshire’, Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 25 (1879), p. 58.

  35. 35.

    Luckett, ‘Crown Patronage and Political Morality’, pp. 578–95.

  36. 36.

    Ibid. For more on the relationship between Daubeney and Luttrell, see the discussion within my doctoral thesis: ‘The Paulet Family and the Gentry of Early Tudor Somerset, 1485–1547’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Surrey, 2016), pp. 88–9.

  37. 37.

    S. B. Chrimes, Henry VII (London, 1972), pp. 308–9.

  38. 38.

    Luckett, ‘Crown Patronage and Political Morality’, pp. 588–92.

  39. 39.

    Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble Families of Lancaster and York (Menston, 1970), ff. 46r–47v; Chisholm Batten, ‘Henry VII in Somersetshire’, p. 66; Arthurson, ‘Rising of 1497’, p. 9; Luckett, ‘Crown Patronage and Political Morality’, pp. 581–2; TNA, C 82/2/21.

  40. 40.

    F. Bacon, The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh, ed. R. Lockyer (London, 1971), pp. 173–4; Chrimes, Henry VII, pp. 90, 111–12.

  41. 41.

    J. P. D. Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor State: Political Culture in the Westcountry (Oxford, 2003), pp. 27–9; Bacon, King Henry the Seventh, pp. 130–49; Chisholm Batten, ‘Henry VII in Somersetshire’, p. 49.

  42. 42.

    J. D. Mackie, The Earlier Tudors, 1485–1558 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 147–8.

  43. 43.

    Chisholm Batten, ‘Henry VII in Somersetshire’, p. 66.

  44. 44.

    C. Woodforde, Stained Glass in Somerset, 1250–1830 (Bath, 1970), p. 274.

  45. 45.

    Bacon, King Henry the Seventh, pp. 184–7.

  46. 46.

    Hall, Union of the Two Noble Families, f. 36r.

  47. 47.

    F. A. Gasquet, The Last Abbot of Glastonbury and Other Essays (London, 1908), pp. 15–16.

  48. 48.

    Luckett, ‘Crown Patronage and Political Morality’, pp. 592–3; BL, Lansdowne MS 127, ff. 33r–34v; TNA, E 36/214, f. 193.

  49. 49.

    Luckett, ‘Crown Patronage and Political Morality’, pp. 592–3.

  50. 50.

    Gasquet, Last Abbot of Glastonbury, pp. 15–16, 21.

  51. 51.

    Arthurson, ‘Rising of 1497’, p. 6; Luckett, ‘Crown Patronage and Local Administration’, pp. 139–40; Chrimes, Henry VII, p. 327.

  52. 52.

    Bacon, King Henry the Seventh, pp. 90–102, 239–40; Chrimes, Henry VII, pp. 194–239.

  53. 53.

    TNA, C 66/642, in J. Gairdner and J. S. Brewer, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, 21 vols. (London, 1862–1932) (afterwards LP), iii, 3282; C 66/643 (LP, iii, 3504); C 66/645, mm. 1d–8d (LP, iv, 547).

  54. 54.

    P. Fleming, ‘Politics’, in Gentry Culture in Late Medieval England, ed. R. Radulescu and A. Truelove (Manchester, 2005), pp. 156–7.

  55. 55.

    H. Castor, The King, the Crown, and the Duchy of Lancaster: Public Authority and Private Power, 1399–1461 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 7–8.

  56. 56.

    A. Wall, Power and Protest in England, 1525–1640 (London, 2000), pp. 48–9.

  57. 57.

    Horrox, Richard III, p. 327.

  58. 58.

    S. Hindle, ‘County Government in England’, in A Companion to Tudor Britain, ed. R. Tittler and L. N. Jones (Oxford, 2004), p. 101.

  59. 59.

    LP, xiii, pt. 2, 967 [13]; D. Lysons and S. Lysons, Magna Britannia: Devonshire, 6 vols. (London, 1822), vi, pp. 430–51.

  60. 60.

    Richard Pollard appeared on Henry VIII’s council fourteen times between 2 May 1516 and 9 May 1525: W. H. Dunham, ‘The Members of Henry VIII’s Whole Council, 1509–1527’, EHR 59 (1944), p. 210.

  61. 61.

    J. Collinson, The History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, 3 vols. (Bath, 1791); S. T. Bindoff, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1509–1558, 3 vols. (London, 1982) (afterwards HP), iii, pp. 71–2; TNA, SP 1/88, ff. 42r-43v (LP, vii, 1612).

  62. 62.

    HP, i, pp. 1–2; iii, pp. 71–2.

  63. 63.

    Collinson, County of Somerset, iii, p. xxxii; Shaw, Knights of England, ii, p. 50. David Ashton claims that Hugh Paulet was ‘knighted alongside [Thomas] Cromwell’ but there is simply no evidence for this. The most obvious explanation is that Ashton has confused Thomas Cromwell with his nephew, Richard, who was knighted at that time: Ashton, ‘The Tudor State’, p. 42.

  64. 64.

    M. J. Bennett has even argued that gentry participation at the battle of Stoke and the northern risings of 1487 and 1489 respectively suggest that the gentry were vital to the security and promotion of the Tudor dynasty because of their compliance: M. Bennett, ‘Henry VII and the Northern Rising of 1489’, EHR 105 (1990), pp. 52–5.

  65. 65.

    HP, iii, pp. 71–2; S. de Carteret, Chroniques des îles de Jersey, Guernesey, Auregny et Serk, ed. G. S. Syvret (Guernesey, 1832), p. 71.

  66. 66.

    P. Williams, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), p. 438; Gunn, ‘Henry Bourchier’, p. 156; Guy, Tudor England, pp. 184, 192.

  67. 67.

    TNA, SP 1/146, ff. 1r–139r (LP, xiv, pt. 1, 652).

  68. 68.

    Collins, Peerage of England, iv, p. 4; Collinson, County of Somerset, ii, p. 167.

  69. 69.

    Collinson, County of Somerset, i, p. xxxvii; LP, xvii, 1154 [75].

  70. 70.

    R. G. Marsden, ‘The Vice-Admirals of the Coast’, EHR 23 (1908), pp. 741–2, 749–50; TNA, SP 1/143, ff. 188r–195v (LP, xiv, pt. 1, 398); LP, xv, 282 [102].

  71. 71.

    Williams, Tudor Regime, p. 82.

  72. 72.

    R. C. Braddock, ‘The Rewards of Office-Holding in Tudor England’, Journal of British Studies 14 (1975), p. 41.

  73. 73.

    BL, Cotton MS Titus B I, f. 465 (LP, xiii, pt. 1, 877).

  74. 74.

    TNA, SP 1/156 (LP, xiv, pt. 2, 782).

  75. 75.

    Hugh was not the only member of the ‘triumvirate’ to be remembered, as Sir John St Loe also featured in Cromwell’s aide-mémoire. TNA, SP 1/131, ff. 193r–194v (LP, xiii, pt. 1, 878); S. E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament, 1529–1536 (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 217–48.

  76. 76.

    HP, iii, p. 71; Collins, Peerage of England, iv, p. 4; Collinson, County of Somerset, ii, p. 286; iii, p. 318.

  77. 77.

    E. W. Ives, Letters and Accounts of William Brereton of Malpas (Chester, 1978), pp. 11–12.

  78. 78.

    M. C. Noonkester, ‘Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Decline of the Sheriff’, Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (1992), pp. 689–90.

  79. 79.

    J. H. Bettey, The Suppression of the Monasteries in the West Country (Gloucester, 1989), pp. 72–4, 131–3, 140–2; D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1995), iii, p. 393.

  80. 80.

    N. Samman, ‘The Progresses of Henry VIII, 1509–1529’, in The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety, ed. D. MacCulloch (Basingstoke, 1995), pp. 59, 64, 73; R. Bell, ‘The Royal Visit to Acton Court in 1535’, in Henry VIII: A European Court in England, ed. D. Starkey (London, 1991), pp. 120–5; H. M. Colvin, ‘Castles and Government in Tudor England’, EHR 83 (1968), p. 230; TNA, C 82/704 (LP, ix, 914 [22]).

  81. 81.

    Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor State, pp. 18–19; G. W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church (New Haven and London, 2005), p. 320; TNA, SP 1/106, f. 134 (LP, xi, 405); G. R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972), p. 110.

  82. 82.

    M. L. Robertson, ‘“The Art of the Possible”: Thomas Cromwell’s Management of West Country Government’, Historical Journal 32 (1989), 793–816; TNA, SP 1/104, f. 214 (LP, x, 1221); SP 1/113, f. 101 (LP, xi, 1430); BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra E IV, f. 257 (LP, xii, pt. 1, 4); TNA, E 315/232, ff. 2r-7v (LP, xiii, pt. 1, 1520); SP 1/140, f. 126 (LP, xiii, pt. 2, 1092).

  83. 83.

    E. W. Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 2005), pp. 178, 266, 268; TNA, C 66/678, mm. 29–30 (LP, xii, pt. 1, 311 [33]).

  84. 84.

    J. R. Thackrah, The University and Colleges of Oxford (Lavenham, 1981), p. 118; C. S. L. Davies, ‘A Woman in the Public Sphere: Dorothy Wadham and the Foundation of Wadham College, Oxford’, EHR 118 (2003), 883–911.

  85. 85.

    J. Youings, ‘The Terms of the Disposal of the Devon Monastic Lands’, EHR 69 (1954), pp. 29–30.

  86. 86.

    E. Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven and London, 2003), pp. 61–2.

  87. 87.

    TNA, E 321/17/30.

  88. 88.

    E. Hobhouse, Churchwardens’ Accounts of Croscombe, Pilton, Yatton, Tintinhull, Morebath, and St Michael’s, Bath (1349-1560) (London, 1890), p. 216; LP, xiii, pt. 1, 1115 [63].

  89. 89.

    Hobhouse, Churchwardens’ Accounts, p. 209; R. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1989), p. 122; Duffy, Voices of Morebath, p. 90.

  90. 90.

    H. Speight, ‘Local Government and Politics in Devon and Cornwall, 1509–49, with Special Reference to the South-Western Rebellion of 1549’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 1991), pp. 80–2, 92.

  91. 91.

    D. Willen, John Russell, First Earl of Bedford. One of the King’s Men (London, 1981), p. 129.

  92. 92.

    J. D. Alsop and D. M. Loades, ‘William Paulet, First Marquis of Winchester: A Question of Age’, Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987), 333–42.

  93. 93.

    J. B. Black, The Reign of Elizabeth, 1558–1603 (Oxford, 1959), p. 378.

  94. 94.

    Winn, The Pouletts of Hinton St George, p. 11.

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    Simon Lambe

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    Matthew Ward

  2. Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Matthew Hefferan

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Lambe, S. (2020). ‘Towards God religious, towards us most faithful’: The Paulet Family, the Somerset Gentry and the Early Tudor Monarchy, 1485–1547. In: Ward, M., Hefferan, M. (eds) Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c.1400-1688. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37767-0_5

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