Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/101

 to speak with the admiral. He was ordered on board the flagship, and, having told his story, was assured by Hawke that if it was true, he would make his fortune; if false, he would hang him at the yard-arm. The fleet then got under way, and Paulet, at his special request, was permitted to stay on board. In the battle which followed he behaved with the utmost gallantry, and was sent home ‘rewarded in such a manner as enabled him to live happily the remainder of his life.’

Such is Paulet's own story, which he very probably brought himself, in his old age, to believe. But wherever it can be tested it is false, and no part of it can be accepted as true. If, in the end of 1758, the admiralty had had a first-rate pilot for the St. Lawrence at their disposal, that pilot would have been sent to the St. Lawrence with Saunders; and, if he had been examined either by the admiralty or the secretary of state, there would be some record of the examination; but there is no such record. We may be quite sure that if he had been granted the pay of a lieutenant for life, the amount would be charged somewhere; but it does not appear. Again, when Conflans came out of Brest on 14 Nov. 1759, the English fleet was not ‘concealed behind the rocks of Ushant;’ nor was it ever at anchor there. Hawke learned of the escape of Conflans from the master of a victualler, which, on its way from the squadron in Quiberon Bay, saw the French fleet making for Belle Isle. It is barely possible that Paulet was the victualler and gave the information. In some way or other he certainly made money, and in his old age was generous to the poor of his neighbourhood. He is said to have been an admirable narrator of his own adventures or of Hawke's battle. He died in Lambeth in 1804.

[Gent. Mag. 1804, ii. 691.] 

PAULET or POULET, HUGH (d. 1572?), military commander and governor of Jersey, born after 1500, was the eldest son of Sir Amias Paulet (d. 1538) [q. v.] of Hinton St. George, Somerset, by his second wife. A younger brother, John, born about 1509, apparently graduated B.A. at Oxford in 1530, became in 1554 the last Roman catholic dean of Jersey, and died in 1565 (, Alumni Oxon.) In 1532 Hugh was in the commission of the peace for Somerset (Cal. State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. v., No. 1694, entry ii.); and he was served heir and sole executor to his father in 1538, receiving a grant of the manor of Sampford-Peverel, Devonshire. He was supervisor of the rents of the surrendered abbey of Glastonbury in 1539, had a grant of Upcroft and Combe near Crewkerne, Somerset, in 1541, and was sheriff of that county (with Dorset) in 1536, 1542, and 1547 (, ii. 166). On 18 Oct. 1537 he was knighted (, Knights; cf. Lit. Remains of Edward VI, pp. lxxxi, 210). He was invited to Prince Edward's baptism (, Eccl. Mem. ii. 5) two days later. In 1544 he was treasurer of the English army at the siege of Boulogne, and distinguished himself at the capture of the Brey on 1 Sept. in the presence of Henry VIII. He seems to have remained at Boulogne until 1547 (Cal. State Papers, 1545-7). On the accession of Edward VI he was, as a known supporter of the protestant cause, one of those charged by Henry VIII's executors, on 11 Feb. 1547, with the 'good order of the sheres near unto them in the west' (, op. cit.) In 1549 he was knight-marshal of the army raised by Lord Russell to put down the rising against the Reformation changes in the west of England. He led the pursuit against the rebels, and defeated them finally at King's Weston, near Bristol (, Chron. iii. 1096). In 1550 he was a commissioner to inquire into the liturgy in the island of Jersey, and to put down obits, dispose of church bells, &c. (, p. 148) ; and was shortly afterwards appointed captain of Jersey and governor of Mont Orgueil Castle, in the place of Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset. He was acting in October 1550 (Cal. State Papers, 1547-53), but his patent bears date 3 May 1551 (, Foedera, xv. 261). This office he retained till his death (Falle says for twenty-four years); but from 25 April 1559, in which year he was made vice-president (under Lord Williams) of the Welsh marches (, Reform, i. 23), he performed his functions through a lieutenant, his son Amias (1536?-1588) [q. v.] Le Quesne (pp. 165, 184-6, 195) speaks strongly of the abuse of power by the Paulet family, but appears to refer less to Sir Hugh than to his grandson.

In 1562, when the French protestants surrendered Havre to Elizabeth, she commissioned Paulet, being a man of 'wisdom and long experience,' to act as adviser to Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick [q. v.], who was to take command of the garrison and to fill the place of high-marshal (, ii. 170). Paulet arrived in the Aide with Count Montgomerie and 5,000l. on 17 Dec. On 1 April 1563 he conferred unsuccessfully with the rheingrave, was sent to England in June, and returned on 14 July with eight hundred men from Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. On the 23rd he met the constable 