The Life and Career of William Paulet (c.1475-1572), Lord Treasurer and First Marquis of Winchester

Abstract

Paulet is a frustrating subject. There is not the evidential base for a meaningful biography. We have appointments to commissions, mention of Paulet doing this and that, but nothing with which to get below the surface. Although he lived to a great age (in harness), we do not know his date of birth; Professor Loades makes a good case for c.1475, thus making him 97 or so in 1572. Even the most conservative estimate would make him 86. A lawyer from an upper-gentry family, he did not attain significant government office until 1526, when he became joint Master of the King's Wards. He served Richard Fox and Thomas Wolsey, bishops of Winchester, and, like Thomas Cromwell, survived Wolsey's fall in 1529. For a couple of years he seems to have been considered the more significant of the two. He was especially prominent on unsuccessful missions to persuade Queen Catherine and Princess Mary to accept their diminished status following the Boleyn marriage. (I find it difficult to accept Loades's put-down of Mary's refusal to accept her bastardisation as ‘adolescent intransigence’.) Paulet famously survived the various changes of political and religious regimes, occupying offices in the royal household and becoming Lord Treasurer in 1550 (surrendering the Wards in 1554). Loades seems to be mistaken in suggesting that he voted against the introduction of the 1549 Prayer Book in the Lords, although he did record dissent from religious legislation in 1559. He accumulated, naturally, a considerable estate and built a magnificent house (according to ODNB the ‘largest in Britain’) on his inherited property at Basing. He rose through the peerage to the unusual and exalted rank of marquis in 1551, so promoted only a year after becoming an earl, presumably as reward for his key role in securing John Dudley's rule and thwarting the expectations of those who believed the fall of Protector Somerset would lead to a more conservative religious policy. For a time in Mary's reign, when the only duke (Norfolk) was still a minor, he was the premier peer of the realm. But, for all this, Loades can do little more than tell again the familiar political narrative, inserting Paulet's name where appropriate. The core of the book lies in two useful appendices, on land grants and forfeitures, and on offices, commissions and the like.