POULETT, Sir John (1615-65), of Courtaweek and Hinton St George, Som.

Despite being distantly related to the Paulet marquesses of Winchester, and claiming descent from ‘the royal blood of the kings of England, France and Spain, through the most renowned houses of Lancaster, Beaumont, Wells, Norris, Oxford [and] Bardolphe’, the Pouletts of Somerset had remained minor local gentlemen until the late sixteenth century.16Gerard’s Description of Som. 1633 ed. E.H. Bates (Som. Rec. Soc. xv), 88-9; Som. RO, DD/BR/BA, C/1061. The successful political careers of Sir Amias Poulett† under Elizabeth I, and of his grandson, John Poulett†, Baron Poulett of Hinton St George, under James I and Charles I, brought great prosperity to the family.17Som. RO, DD/PT/S/1742. By 1640 the Pouletts owned extensive estates in Somerset, Dorset and Devon, and had acquired, through marriage, lands in Middlesex (including a mansion at Chiswick). The whole estate was said to be worth over £3,000 a year before the first civil war.18SP23/184, pp. 777-80. Wealth also brought local standing. Lord Poulett used his influence at court to conduct a bitter feud with the Phelipps family for control of Somerset, which dominated county politics until the death of Sir Robert Phelipps† in 1638, and during the civil war, Lord Poulett’s local influence helped the royalists to gain considerable support in Somerset and Dorset.

Lord Poulett’s son and heir, John Poulett (who spelled his name thus), was given the upbringing suitable to the scion of a major gentry family.19Signature: SP23/184, p. 767: 27 July 1646. Educated at Oxford from 1632 until perhaps 1636, Poulett also accompanied his father on naval expeditions in the mid-1630s, and it was while on one such venture, against the French fleet in the summer and autumn of 1635, that both father and son were knighted by the earl of Lindsey.20Al. Ox.; Add. 35342, ff. 3-9; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 203; Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 124. Before 1640, Poulett had married a daughter of Horace Lord Vere, thereby acquiring social prestige, family ties to, among others, the Fairfaxes of Denton in Yorkshire, and landed interests in Essex and Berkshire.21Vis. Som. 1672, 50-1; SP23/184, pp. 777-80. Despite his naval service, and his contacts with the martial Veres and Fairfaxes, Sir John Poulett must not be confused with his namesake, a professional soldier knighted by Charles I after the first bishops’ war in 1639.22Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 206. It was almost certainly the soldier, and not the MP, who served under Sir Thomas Glemham as a serjeant-major in 1639, and as a lieutenant-colonel in 1640.23E351/292-3. The soldier went on to serve under Lord Inchiquin in Ireland between June 1642 and October 1643, and to command a regiment of Irish troops in Sir Ralph Hopton’s* army until its defeat at Cheriton in 1644.24Bodl. Carte 3, f. 259; Carte 7, ff. 91, 653; Bellum Civile, 62-3, 66, 82. As we shall see, in the same period the MP was active in Somerset and resident in Wales, and could not have served in Ireland.

With this confusion resolved, the career of this Member during the 1640s becomes considerably clearer. Poulett first emerges as a player in Somerset politics during the Short Parliament elections in 1640, when he backed his cousin, Thomas Smyth I*, and the future parliamentarian, Alexander Popham*, as knights of the shire. By the autumn of that year, during the Long Parliament elections, however, Poulett seems to have split with Smyth, and he used his local influence to gain the county seat for himself.25Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 154. As Edward Phelipps* – whose family were traditional enemies of the Pouletts locally – later complained to Smyth: ‘Your brother Poulett had no probability of receiving this honour had your name been only mentioned at the cross’ (where the hustings took place).26Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 167. Poulett’s parliamentary career was brief, and uneventful. He had arrived in Westminster by early May 1641, when he took the Protestation, but apparently played no part in the House’s proceedings, and on 10 July received permission to travel to the west country.27CJ ii. 133a, 205b. In August Poulett joined Sir John Horner* and John Pyne* as a commissioner to disarm recusants in the locality.28LJ iv. 385b. He returned to Westminster after the recess, and on 2 November was named to a committee sent to the City of London to negotiate a loan to fund the suppression of the rebellion in Ireland.29CJ ii. 302a. There is no record of his activity during the winter months, and he was granted further leave of absence in April 1642.30CJ ii. 533a.

Poulett’s decision to join the king, made soon after his return to the west country, may have been influenced by his father’s loyalty to the king who had ennobled him. Certainly, Sir John was acting in conjunction with other members of his family at this time. In the spring, Sir John’s brothers, Francis and Amias Poulett, had delivered the second Somerset petition to Parliament in favour of episcopacy, and in late July Sir John joined Lord Poulett as a royalist commissioner for array in the county.31Som. RO, DD/HI/466, unfol.; Northants RO, FH133, unfol. The arrival of the marquess of Hertford and other commissioners at Wells in early August 1642 brought open conflict between the opposing factions in Somerset. When they were challenged by the parliamentarian, John Pyne*, Poulett and his friends ‘met with him ... in a warlike manner with their pistols and great saddles’, and were later accused of having ‘slain and wounded divers of the Parliament side without provocation’ in a skirmish outside Wells.32PJ, iii. 286-7; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, iii. 17. As a result, Poulett was disabled as a MP on 8 August, and in mid-September he was impeached for treason.33CJ ii. 708b; LJ v. 360a. By then, the county had risen against the royalists, who were forced to flee to Dorset, where Poulett and his father joined Hertford in taking refuge at Sherborne Castle.34Declaration made by the Lord Marquesse of Hertford (1642), 2-3 (E.118.31).

After the Wells debacle, Poulett continued to support the king. In January 1643 he attended the court at Oxford, and was awarded an honorary degree by the university.35Al.Ox. In October of that year he and his father were appointed commissioners for Somerset by Hopton, and authorised to collect contributions and to regulate forces in the county.36Som. RO, DD/PH/222, f. 75. In January 1644 Poulett was listed among those attending the Oxford Parliament, and in early 1645 he was appointed a commissioner to raise a new army for the king in the south west.37Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 575; Warburton, Mems. Prince Rupert, iii. 80. Despite his apparent commitment to the king, there are signs that Poulett was not a die-hard royalist. As early as September 1642, his mother-in-law, Lady Vere, sent her kinsman, Vere Harcourt, from London ‘into the county of Somerset to persuade Sir John Poulett her son-in-law to withdraw himself from that dangerous association at Sherborne’. Harcourt found Poulett more than amenable: he ‘did freely and fully express himself willing to submit to Parliament’, but, fearing impeachment at Westminster, ‘he determined to retire for a while into Wales’ until guarantees of lenient treatment were forthcoming.38SP23/184, p. 781. In April 1643 Poulett made his own approaches to the parliamentarians in Somerset, as Alexander Popham noted: ‘a tenant of the Lord Poulett’s came out of Wales from Sir John Poulett, and expressed Sir John’s earnest desire to come into Parliament’. Although the request was passed on to Westminster, no action was taken to encourage Poulett to defect.39SP23/184, p. 773. These incidents lend credence to Poulett’s later claim that he attended the Oxford Parliament in 1644 only reluctantly, and that ‘he was not present in that assembly when that vote passed, whereby the [Westminster] Parliament were voted traitors, but that he, understanding thereof purposely, absented [from] that meeting and went into the country, and from that time afterwards laboured his coming in, and submission unto, the Parliament’.40SP23/184, p. 757. It was not long before Poulett was making new representations to Parliament. The expedition of his wife’s brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Fairfax*, into the west in 1645 gave Poulett his opportunity, and he ‘rendered himself’ to the New Model army in July 1645.41SP23/184, p. 757. Poulett remained under Fairfax’s protection in September, and played host to the general’s wife in Somerset in October, before travelling to London in December.42CJ iv. 274a; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, iii. 251.

Poulett’s experiences before the Committee for Compounding were shaped by his connection with prominent parliamentarians. In January and February 1646 his defence was bolstered by the efforts of Lady Vere, who tried to convince the committee that Lord Poulett had settled his estates on his son at the time of his marriage, thus saving the family lands from heavier penalties.43SP23/184, pp. 783, 786. On 1 May 1646 the Commons received a letter from Fairfax ‘wherein he made earnest request to the House that by reason of the alliance which had been contracted between him and Sir John Poulett, son of the Lord Poulett’, the latter should be included in the general pardon and allowed to compound.44Add. 31116, p. 534. This prompted a fierce debate in which ‘many seconded it’, but ‘others violently opposed it’, and the vote protecting the Pouletts scraped through.45Harington’s Diary, 24-5. On 22 July the Committee for Compounding reported its findings, recommending a fine of £9,400 on Sir John Poulett alone.46SP23/184, pp. 757-9. On 24 July the Commons ordered that both Pouletts were to perfect their compositions before 1 August or face sequestration, but there were further delays.47CJ iv. 627a. Before the end of the year, Fairfax had sent a letter to the Compounding Committee, hoping that ‘Sir John Poulett’s fine should have been wholly remitted’ by Parliament, ‘but since that was not granted’ requesting a reduction of the fine in accordance with the Exeter articles. As a result, the fine was reduced to £3,760.48SP23/184, p. 759. Attempts by John Ashe* and other local enemies of the Pouletts to increase the punishment met with little success. When the borough of Lyme Regis was granted a large part of the income from the Poulett estate in August 1648, the following month a Commons resolution upheld the earlier order allowing Sir John to enjoy his whole estate – including his reversionary interest in his father’s lands.49CJ v. 662b-663a; vi. 23b-24a. The final settlement, made on 5 March 1649, allowed Poulett to compound under the Exeter articles, remitting his fine and allowing a pardon ‘out of respect to the general’.50CJ vi. 155a-6a.

After the death of Lord Poulett on 20 March 1649, and the accession of Sir John Poulett as 2nd Baron Poulett of Hinton St George, the family’s fortunes gradually improved. The surviving estate accounts show that, although the rental income declined between 1649 and 1652 (dropping to £1,800 per annum), in the period 1652-5 payments increased, peaking at £2,900 per annum - just below the 1640 value of £3,300.51Som. RO, DD/PT/H/452, Box 40, unfol.: Lord Poulett’s estate acct. 1651-5. Despite Poulett’s apparent willingness to sell out to Parliament in the previous decade, the royalist exiles hoped that he would support their efforts to restore the king. In October 1649, Charles Stuart planned to make him commander-in-chief of the Hampshire forces in a projected rising, and in 1655 one Dorset informant claimed that Poulett tacitly supported John Penruddock’s western rebellion.52CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 354-5; 1655, pp. 38-9. There is no evidence that Poulett fulfilled royalist expectations, and he was not investigated by the government on either occasion. Poulett’s continuing good relations with the interregnum regimes may have owed something to the efforts of his fellow Somerset gentry, in particular John Harington II*, who reputedly collaborated the protectorate partly to save Poulett and other neighbours from ‘spoil and ruin’.53Add. 46373B, f. 5. In February 1658 Poulett received a pass to go to France, and a similar document was procured for his son, John Poulett, in the following October; but it is unlikely that the family did indeed go into exile at this time.54CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 551; 1658-9, p.580.

At the Restoration of the monarchy, Poulett suddenly rediscovered his loyalty to the Stuarts. As deputy lieutenant of Somerset, he helped to secure the county against republican sedition from 1662, but he did not forget his benefactors from the previous decades, and with Edward Phelipps* and other Somerset cavaliers, he helped John Harington to obtain a royal pardon.55CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 511, 589; 1663-4, p. 301; Add. 46373B, f. 5. Poulett continued to enjoy material prosperity after 1660, and when he wrote his will in 1663 he was able to bequeath portions of £4,000 to his two unmarried daughters.56PROB11/321/387. By the spring of 1665 Poulett’s health had begun to fail, and he was forced to give up his activities in the locality.57CSP Dom. 1664-5, p. 344. He died on 15 September 1665, and was buried at Hinton, leaving the estate and title to his son and heir, John Poulett, who became the 3rd Baron Poulett of Hinton St George.58Vis. Som. 1672, 50-1.