PAULET, Hampden (b. by 1550), of Nether Wallop and Buckland, Hants.

Paulet was returned at Stockbridge through his own local influence and at Lyme through that of his cousin Sir William Paulet, 3rd Marquess of Winchester. In neither Parliament did he make any mark in the House. He was a soldier, serving at The Hague, and, later in 1586 levying foot soldiers in Berkshire and Hampshire. He held a military appointment at Southampton in 1588 and in the following year took reinforcements of Hampshire levies to France. Twice he avoided being pricked as sheriff of Hampshire: in 1598 he approached the Earl of Essex through Mountjoy, and in 1601 the 2nd Baron Hunsdon wrote to Sir Robert Cecil on his behalf. On a number of occasions Paulet can be seen acting for the 4th Marquess of Winchester, to whom he lent £400. A curious incident occurred in 1602 when the Marchioness complained to her uncle, Sir Robert Cecil, that Paulet had been slandered by William St. John in ‘most unfitting terms by him in public delivered’. Paulet himself frequently wrote business letters to Cecil, in 1601 complaining that Portsmouth was short of necessities, and the next year sending him items of shipping news. The last record found of him is a letter to Cecil in 1603, signed by 18 other knights, refusing to surrender his post at Portsmouth to Sir Henry Danvers.1VCH Hants, iv. 13, 345, 494; Mill Stephenson, Mon. Brasses, 94, 165; HMC 7th Rep. 655a; APC, xxvii. 201; xxix. 681; Collins, Peerage, ii. 370; E. M. Tenison, Eliz. England, vi. 45; APC, xiv. 55; xvii. 96; HMC Foljambe, 42; HMC Hatfield, viii. 464, 465; xi. 322, 498; xii. 34, 378, 701; Harl. 4713, ff. 93, 94, 272.