Sir Hugh Paulet and the Christening of Prince Edward, Monday 15 October 1537

Abstract

This article explores the moment that Henry VIII’s son, the future Edward VI, was christened at Hampton Court Palace on Monday 15 October 1537. It addresses the event as a moment of magnificent courtly celebration, largely owing to the collective sense of relief at the safe delivery of a healthy, legitimate male heir. As such, we find aspirational families vying for a position at — or an invitation to — court in the name of career progression. Accordingly, the article highlights in particular the presence of one of the guests at the christening, Sir Hugh Paulet (c. 1500–73), and shows how his invitation and attendance symbolised his enhanced status within his native county of Somerset and confirmed his place among the great and good of the kingdom. The subplot to this event, however, was an outbreak of plague across London and the south of England, leading the King to move away from the city and to keep his family and his court in isolation in the healthier environs of his favourite royal palace. The plague itself offers a crucial context to this ceremony, as it suggests that even in the face of such dangers, Paulet and others like him saw the necessity of attending this ceremony. Indeed, the reverse is also true: the King needed to demonstrate his favour for those who were loyal.

Notes

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5 British Library (hereafter BL), Cotton MS Nero C X, fol. 1 (J. S. Brewer and James Gairdner (eds), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII (21 vols, London, 1862–1932) (hereafter LP), vol. XII (ii), 889).

6 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), SP1/571 (LP, vol. XII (ii), 905).

7 Hugh Latimer, Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer, Sometime Bishop of Worcester, Martyr, 1555, ed. George Elwes Corrie (Cambridge, 1845), p. 385.

8 BL, Add. MS. 6113, fol. 81r; Egerton MS. 985, fol. 33r (LP, vol. XII (ii), 911).

9 Fiona Louise Kisby, ‘“When the king goeth a procession”: Chapel Ceremonies and Services, The Ritual Year, and Religious Reforms at the Early Tudor Court, 1485–1547’, Journal of British Studies 40 (2001), pp. 44-75, p. 46.

10 J.R. Lander, The Wars of the Roses (Stroud, 1992), pp. 220-21.

11 David Starkey, ‘Henry VI’s Old Blue Gown’, The Court Historian 4 (1999), pp. 1-28, p. 2.

12 Jennifer Loach, Edward VI, ed. George W. Bernard and Penry Williams (New Haven and London, 1999), p. 8.

13 Thurley, ‘Henry VIII and the Building of Hampton Court’, pp. 30-31.

14 J.F.D. Shrewsbury, A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 170-71.

15 Dries Raeymaekers and Sebastiaan Derks, ‘Repertoires of Access in Princely Courts, 1400–1700’, in Harm Kaal and Daniëlle Slootjes (eds), New Perspectives on Power and Political Representation from Ancient History to the Present Day (Leiden, 2019), pp. 78-93.

16 Steven Gunn, Henry VII’s New Men and the Making of Tudor England (Oxford, 2016), pp. 9-15, 46-50.

17 C.A.H. Frankyln, A Genealogical History of the Families of Paulet (or Pawlett), Berewe (or Barrow), Lawrence and Parker (Bedford, 1963), p. 60.

18 Josiah Clement Wedgwood, History of Parliament: Biographies of the Members of the Commons House 1439–1509 (2 vols, London, 1936-38), vol. I, pp. 667-8; S.W.B. Harbin, Members of Parliament for the County of Somerset (Taunton, 1939), pp. 112-13.

19 S.T. Bindoff (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1509–1558 (3 vols, London, 1982) (hereafter HP), vol. III, pp. 71-72.

20 On the alteration to the spelling of the family name: Thomas G. Barnes, ‘Poulett, John, First Baron Poulett (1586–1649)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter ODNB) (Oxford, 2004) [https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-22632].

21 J.D. Alsop and D.M. Loades, ‘William Paulet, First Marquis of Winchester: A Question of Age’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987), pp. 333-42, p. 336.

22 Loach, Edward VI, pp. 5-6.

23 Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2017), p. 59.

24 Simon Lambe, ‘The Dissolution of the Monasteries in Somerset: The Records of the Court of Augmentations at the National Archives, Kew (E 321)’, Archives 54 (2019), pp. 59-73; Simon Lambe, ‘The Life and Career of Sir Amias Paulet (c. 1457–1538): Service, Loyalty and Rebellion’, The Ricardian 32 (2022), pp. 127-145; Simon Lambe, ‘“Towards God religious, towards us most faithful”: The Paulet Family, the Somerset Gentry and the Early Tudor Monarchy, 1485–1547’, in Matthew Hefferan and Matthew Ward (eds), Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c. 1400–1688 (London, 2020), pp. 86-109.

25 LP, vol. XIII (ii), 967 [13].

26 C.S.L. Davies, ‘Paulet, Sir Hugh (b. before 1510, d. 1573), Soldier and Administrator’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004) [https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-21619]. Richard Pollard appeared on Henry VIII’s council fourteen times between 2 May 1516 and 9 May 1525: William Huse Dunham, Jr., ‘The Members of Henry VIII’s Whole Council, 1509–1527’, English Historical Review 59 (1944), pp. 187-210, p. 210.

27 ‘Paulet, Sir Hugh’, in Sidney Lee and Leslie Stephens (eds), The Dictionary of National Biography: From the Earliest Times to 1900 (22 vols, London, 1973), vol. XV, p. 534.

28 Eric W. Ives, Letters and Accounts of William Brereton of Malpas (Chester, 1978), pp. 11-12.

29 John Collinson, The History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset (3 vols, Bath, 1791), vol. II, p. 167; HP, vol. III, pp. 71-2; TNA, SP1/88, fols 42r-43v (LP, vol. VII, 1612).

30 HP, vol. I, pp. 1-2; vol. III, pp. 71-2.

31 BL, Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 465r (LP, vol. XIII (i), 877).

32 TNA, SP1/156 (LP, vol. XIV (ii), 782).

33 TNA, SP1/131, fols 193r-194v (LP, vol. XIII (i), 878); Stanford E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament, 1529–1536 (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 217-48.

34 Collinson, County of Somerset, vol. III, p. xxxii; William Arthur 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), vol. II, p. 50. David Ashton claims that Hugh Paulet was ‘knighted alongside [Thomas] Cromwell’ but there is 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: David J. Ashton, ‘The Tudor State and County Politics: the Greater Gentry of Somerset, c. 1509–1558’, Ph.D. Thesis (University of Oxford, 1998), p. 42.

35 John Husee to Lady Lisle, 16 October 1537 (LP, vol. XII (ii), 923).

36 Fiona Louise Kisby, ‘The Royal Household Chapel in Early-Tudor London, 1485–1547’, Ph.D. Thesis (University of London, 1996), p. 172.

37 BL, Add. MS. 6113, fol. 81v.

38 Maria Hayward, ‘Symbols of Majesty: Cloths of Estate at the Court of Henry VIII’, Furniture History 41 (2005), pp. 1-11, p. 6.

39 Thurley, ‘Henry VIII and the Building of Hampton Court’, p. 11.

40 Hayward, Dress at the Court of Henry VIII, pp. 58-9; Kisby, ‘The Royal Household Chapel’, p. 174; John Leland, De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, ed. T. Hearne (6 vols, London, 1774), vol. II, pp. 671-5.

41 Simon Thurley, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England: Architecture and Court Life, 1460–1547 (New Haven and London, 1993), pp. 195-205; Simon Thurley, ‘The Tudor Chapel and State Apartments at Hampton Court Palace’, The Court Historian 2, sup. 1 (1997), pp. 14-15, p. 14.

42 Robert Hutchinson, The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (London, 2005), p. 65.

43 David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997), pp. 197-232.

44 DeMolen, ‘The Birth of Edward VI’, pp. 359-78; J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), p. 353.

45 BN Paris, Fr. 2997, fol. 3r (LP, vol. XII (ii), 972).

46 A.R. Myers (ed.), The Household of Edward IV: the Black Book and the Ordinance of 1478 (Manchester, 1959), p. 5.

47 BL, Add. MS 38174, fols 11r-12v and 41r-41v (Thomas Astle and Francis Grose (eds), The Antiquarian Repertory; Aa Miscellany Intended to Preserve and Illustrate Several Valuable Remains of Old Times, etc. (4 vols, London, 1807-9), vol. I, pp. 296-341).

48 BL, Add. MS 71009, fols 27r-28v.

49 BL, MS Harley 642, fols 198-217 (printed in Society of Antiquaries of London, A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household Made in Divers Reigns from King Edward III to King William and Queen Mary: Also Receipts in Ancient Cookery (London, 1790), pp. 109-33).

50 The Household of Edward IV, p. 29.

51 Thurley, ‘Henry VIII and the Building of Hampton Court’, pp. 1-57.

52 Loach, Edward VI, pp. 5-6.

53 Kisby, ‘The Royal Household Chapel’, p. 174; Leland, De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, vol. II, pp. 671-5.

54 M.L. Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace: A Study of the Rebel Armies of October 1536 (Manchester, 1996), pp. 381-88.

55 BL, Add. MS. 6113, fol. 81r; part 2, BL, Egerton MS. 985, fol. 33r (LP, vol. XII (ii), 911).

56 Hayward, Dress at the Court of Henry VIII, p. 59.

57 Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts: Gift-exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2014), pp. 54, 60; Raeymaekers and Derks, ‘Repertoires of Access in Princely Courts’, p. 79.

58 Hutchinson, The Last Days of Henry VIII, p. 65.

59 Heal, The Power of Gifts, p. 64; BL, Add. MS 6113, fol. 81r.

60 ‘ … saving that the taper, salt and basin were left and the gifts of the gossips carried, i.e. Lady Mary, a cup of gold borne by the earl of Essex; the archbishop, 3 great bowls and 2 great pots, silver and gilt, borne by the earl of Wiltshire; Norfolk, ditto, borne by the earl of Sussex; Suffolk, 2 great flagons and 2 great pots, silver and gilt, borne by Viscount Beauchamp. Lady Elizabeth went with her sister Lady Mary and Lady Herbert of Troy to bear the train: BL, Add. MS. 6113, fol. 81r; part 2, BL, Egerton MS. 985, fol. 33r (LP, vol. XII (ii), 911).

61 Hutchinson, The Last Days of Henry VIII, p. 66.

62 Euan C. Roger, ‘“To be shut up”: New Evidence for the Development of Quarantine Regulations in Early-Tudor England’, Social History of Medicine 33 (2020), pp. 1077-96, p. 1077.

63 LP, vol. XII (ii), 179.

64 LP, vol. XII (ii), 891.

65 BL, Harl. MS. 422, fol. 149r (LP, vol. XII (ii), 894).

66 Kisby, ‘The Royal Household Chapel’, pp. 172-3.

67 Collinson, County of Somerset, vol. I, xxxvii; LP, vol. XVII, 1154 [75].

68 Penry Williams, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), p. 82.

69 Robert C. Braddock, ‘The Rewards of Office-Holding in Tudor England’. Journal of British Studies 14 (1975), pp. 29-47, p. 41.

70 HP, vol. III, p. 71; Arthur Collins, The Peerage of England. Genealogical, Biographical and Historical (9 vols, London, 1812), vol. IV, p. 4; Collinson, County of Somerset, vol. II, p. 286; vol. III, p. 318.

71 LP, vol. XIII (i), 1011.

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Simon Lambe

Simon Lambe

Dr Simon Lambe is an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Course Director for History at London South Bank University. His academic background is in gentry and royal relations in late medieval and early Tudor England. In 2018, he was the recipient of the Institute of Historical Research’s Scouloudi Research Award; in 2019, he received a Research and Publication Award from The Society for Court Studies; finally, in 2021 he received an Early Career Researcher Support Grant from the Society for the Study of French History. Among his publications are ‘“Towards God religious, towards us most faithful”: the Paulet family, the Somerset gentry and the early Tudor monarchy, 1485–1547’, in Matthew Hefferan and Matthew Ward (eds), Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c. 1400–1688 (London, 2020) and ‘The life and career of Sir Amias Paulet (c. 1457–1538): service, loyalty and rebellion’, published in The Ricardian.