William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester

• 1. Introduction

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  William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester, was once asked how he had come through so many storms at court not merely unhurt but climbing the whole time. His reply was five words long: "By being a willow, not an oak". The question was fair. Paulet served as Lord High Treasurer and as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. He worked at the center of English government under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth. Few men in that age of burned bishops and beheaded ministers kept their offices through all four reigns. This documentary asks where such a man came from, what each ruler asked of him, and how much of himself he was willing to bend.

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• 2. Hampshire Roots

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  Basing Castle, in the parish of Old Basing near Basingstoke, was the seat of Sir John Paulet, who lived from 1460 until the 5th of January 1525. His eldest son William grew up in a family with roots in two counties. The Paulets took their name from the manor of Paulet, now called Pawlett, near Bridgwater in Somerset. The senior branch sat at Hinton St George and had lived in Somerset since the early thirteenth century. Sir John also held Nunney Castle in Somerset, which had come down from the Delamere family in 1415.

  The Hampshire lands arrived through a marriage. William's great-grandfather John Paulet wed Constance Poynings, a granddaughter and coheiress of Thomas Poynings, 5th Baron St John of Basing. That barony became abeyant when John died in 1428 or 1429. Sir John, William's father, had held a military command against the Cornish rebels in 1497.

  Authorities quote either 1483 or 1485 for William's birth. A claim that he was ninety-seven when he died would push the date back to 1474 or 1475. His birthplace is equally uncertain, though it may have been Fisherton Delamere in Wiltshire, one of his father's manors.

  Paulet served as High Sheriff of Hampshire in 1512, 1519-1523 and 1527. He was knighted before the end of 1525. In November 1526 he became Master of the King's Wards, and in the same year he appeared in the Privy Council. That wardship post would stay with him, in changing forms, until 1554.

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• 3. Henry's Servant

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  In 1529 the voters of Hampshire elected Paulet as their knight of the shire, and a national career began. In 1532 he crossed to Calais with Henry VIII. The following spring he went with the Duke of Norfolk to meet King Francis I of France. The plan was a proposed audience with the Pope to discuss Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

  Paulet moved easily among the powerful. He became a close associate of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and a friend of Thomas Cromwell. He also became steward of the bishopric of Winchester. In 1536 he received the keepership of Pamber Forest, and on the 9th of March 1539 he was created Baron St John.

  The work was not always gentle. In 1535 and 1536 he sat as one of the judges at the trials of John Fisher, Sir Thomas More, and the alleged accomplices of Anne Boleyn. In the autumn of 1536 he helped lead the royal forces against the Pilgrimage of Grace, a rebellion that had just broken out.

  Honors followed the duties. In 1543 he became a Knight of the Garter. In June of that year he was one of six commissioners for the Treaty of Greenwich, an agreement for the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Prince Edward. By 1546 he was Lord President of the Council. In 1547 he was an executor of Henry VIII's will, which made him one of the men who would shape the reign of a child.

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• 4. Changing Faiths

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  Paulet began as a Catholic. Once the break with Rome was decided on, he was quickly persuaded to see things Henry's way. The reward came with the dissolution of the monasteries, when he received former Church properties.

  Under Edward VI he became an evangelical Protestant. He persecuted Roman Catholics and Henrician Conservatives alike. When the Catholic Mary came to the throne, he announced his return to the old faith and began persecuting his former Protestant co-religionists. He even denounced Bishop Bonner for "laxity in prosecuting the heretics."

  His household followed him into favor. On Tuesday the 21st of August 1554, Mary entered Westminster Abbey with her train carried by Elizabeth, Marchioness of Winchester, and by Anne of Cleves. Paulet's wife thus stood in one of the most public processions of the reign.

  When Elizabeth succeeded, he shifted course once more and became an advocate of middle-road Anglicanism. By one count he professed five changes of religious direction. The sixth, a retreat into private conviction, never came, because he held office until the end of his life.

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• 5. Edward's Court

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  On the 19th of January 1550, Paulet received the Earldom of Wiltshire and the post of Lord Treasurer that had belonged to the Duke of Somerset. It was payment for taking a side. In 1549 he had backed the Earl of Warwick against Somerset in the struggle over the young king's government. The next month Warwick took over as Lord President of the Council.

  The partnership kept paying. On the 11th of October 1551, Warwick was created Duke of Northumberland, and Paulet received the Marquessate of Winchester. Six weeks later he served as Lord High Steward at the trial of the very man he had helped to unseat, the Duke of Somerset.

  Contemporaries had a phrase for the arrangement. It was said that Northumberland and Winchester "ruled the court" of the minor King Edward VI. Paulet's own list of offices from the period includes Joint Governor of the king, Lord Steward of the Household, and Chief Justice in Eyre, South of Trent.

  The boy king died, and the Catholic Mary took the throne. She confirmed Paulet in every one of his positions.

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• 6. Elder Statesman

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  By 1559 Paulet was over seventy years old, and he showed no sign of slowing down. After Mary's death he remained Lord Treasurer and kept many of his other offices. He served as Speaker of the House of Lords, and he held that role again in 1566. In 1558 he had been lieutenant of the forces in London. In 1569 he was Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire and Middlesex, and joint Lord Lieutenant of London.

  Elizabeth liked him openly. She once joked, "for, by my troth, if my lord treasurer were but a young man, I could find it in my heart to have him for a husband before any man in England."

  His counsel in these years was cautious. He opposed any military support for Continental Protestantism, because he feared it would cause a breach with strongly Catholic Spain. It was the same instinct that had kept him in office for decades, now applied to foreign policy.

  He also kept local posts that tied him to Hampshire. He was Keeper and Captain of St Andrew's Castle at Hamble from 1547 until his death, and keeper of Alice Holt and Woolmer Forests from 1548 to the same point. His Treasurer's staff of office ended only with his life.

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• 7. Family Ties

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  In 1503 Paulet married Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir William Capel, Lord Mayor of London, and Margaret Arundell. She died on the 25th of December 1558. They had four sons and four daughters, and the marriages of the children spread the family across southern England.

  The eldest son, John Paulet, became the 2nd Marquess of Winchester. Another son, Chidiock Paulet, served as governor of Southampton under both Mary and Elizabeth. The source also records sons named Thomas and Giles.

  The daughters married into neighboring gentry. Alice married Richard Stawell of Cotherston in Somerset. Margaret married Sir William Berkeley. Margery married Sir Richard Waller of Oldstoke in Hampshire. Eleanor, who died on the 26th of September 1558, married Sir Richard Pecksall of Beaurepaire in Hampshire, the hereditary Master of the Buckhounds.

  Paulet's siblings stayed close to home too. His brother Sir George Paulet lived at Crondall Manor in Hampshire. His sister Eleanor, born in 1479, married William Giffard of Itchell Manor at Ewshot. Paulet himself owned Amport House on the edge of the village of Amport.

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• 8. Basing House

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  Basing House was the great project of his old age. Paulet held it, and he set about rebuilding and fortifying it. It was there, still in office and a very old man, that he died on the 10th of March 1572.

  His tomb stands on the south side of the chancel of Basing church. The church sits in the same parish as the castle where his father had lived, so a career that reached from Henry's court to Elizabeth's treasury ended within sight of its Hampshire beginning.

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