Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/93

Paulet the door. He was free in 1524, as in that year he was a commissioner to collect the subsidy in Somerset. He greatly improved the family mansion at Hinton St. George, and must have been rich, though he is said to have been in debt both to Henry VII and to Henry VIII. It is for this reason, perhaps, that on 30 April 1509 he appears as one who was excepted from the general pardon; he was pardoned, however, on 28 Aug. Paulet died in 1538. His will is printed in ‘Testamenta Vetusta.’ He married, first, Margaret, daughter of Sir John Paulet of Nunney Castle, Somerset, and sister of Sir John Paulet, mentioned above (by her he left no issue); secondly, Laura, daughter of William Kellaway of Roeborne, Hampshire. By her he left Sir Hugh Paulet [q. v.] and other children.

[Letters and Papers, Henry VIII; Metcalfe's Knights, p. 16; Collinson's Somerset, ii. 167; Ordinances of the Privy Council, ed. Nicolas, vii. 115, 145; Nicolas's Testamenta Vetusta, p. 681; Letters, &c., of Richard III and Henry VII (Rolls Ser), i. 406, 407, ii. 76, 337; Campbell's Materials for Hist. of Henry VII (Rolls Ser.), i. 583.] 

PAULET or POULET, AMYAS (1536?–1588), keeper of Mary Queen of Scots, born about 1536, was son of Sir Hugh Paulet [q. v.], by his first wife. He was made his father's lieutenant in the government of Jersey on 25 April 1559, and remained in residence in Jersey for some twelve years. A convinced puritan through life, he distinguished his rule of the island by repressing the practice of the catholic religion, and offered ostentatious protection to Huguenot refugees from France. With Sir Philip Carteret, the native leader among the islanders, he was in repeated conflict. On his father's death in 1571 he succeeded to the full post of governor; but he soon left Jersey and delegated his powers to his brother George, who became bailiff in 1583, and subsequently to his son Anthony. His representatives ruled the island with greater rigour than he had practised, and their tyranny occasionally drew from him a gentle reproof. But although he watched with attention the course of events in Jersey until his death, other duties compelled him to exercise a merely nominal control (cf., pp. 121, 133).

Paulet was knighted in 1576, and in September of the same year left London for Paris to fill the important office of ambassador at the French court. He regarded the movements of the Huguenots with keen sympathy, and corresponded with his government copiously, if not enthusiastically, on the proposal to marry the Duc d'Alençon to Queen Elizabeth. His Parisian career was uneventful, and in November 1579 he was recalled. The Earl of Leicester had no liking for his stern demeanour, but he had completely gained the confidence of Sir Francis Walsingham. On Walsingham's recommendation he was nominated in January 1585 to the responsible office of keeper of Mary Queen of Scots, and was made a privy councillor. Mary was Queen Elizabeth's prisoner at Tutbury. Sir Ralph Sadler had been her latest warder, and Lord St. John of Bletsoe had been, in the first instance, invited to relieve Sadler. It was only after Lord St. John's refusal of the post that Paulet's name had been suggested. Paulet's instructions, dated 4 March, are not extant, but it is known that he was directed to treat his prisoner with far greater severity than Sadler had employed. Her correspondence was to be more carefully inspected; her opportunities of almsgiving were to undergo limitation; she was to be kept in greater seclusion, and less regard was to be paid to her claims to maintain in her household the etiquette of a court. Queen Mary protested against the selection of Paulet; she feared his puritanic fervour, and urged that while in Paris he had shown marked hostility to her agents there [see 1543–1606?]. Elizabeth retorted in an autograph letter that he had done his duty.

On 17 April Paulet arrived at Tutbury, and was installed in office. His attitude to his prisoner was from the first courteous but firm, and her frequent complaints left him unmoved. He took the most minute precautions to make her custody secure, and he told Walsingham (5 July 1585) that whenever an attempt at rescue seemed likely to prove successful, he was prepared to kill Mary rather than yield her alive (, p. 49). His anxieties were intensified by Elizabeth's parsimony. He had to provide, as a rule, for nearly one hundred and twenty-seven persons—Mary's attendants numbered fifty-one, and his own retinue, including thirty soldiers, consisted of seventy-six men. Frequently kept without adequate supplies, Paulet advanced large sums of money from his own purse, and the government showed no haste in repaying him. At the end of 1585 Mary desired a change of residence, and Paulet was ordered to remove the establishment on 2 Dec. to Chartley, a house belonging to the Earl of Essex. The cost of living proved much higher than at Tutbury, and the difficulty of meeting the expenses was greater. In March 1586 Morgan, Mary's agent in Paris, wrote urging her