TUCHET, George (1553-1617)

Audley’s forebears reputedly arrived in England at the Norman Conquest, though they acquired their peerage only in 1405, when John Tuchet^† was summoned to Parliament as the 4th Lord Audley in succession to a maternal kinsman. The family briefly achieved political prominence in 1484, when the 6th baron, John^†, became lord treasurer to Richard III. However, they suffered a major setback in the next reign, when James^†, 7th Lord Audley was executed for his part in the 1497 Cornish Rebellion, and most of his lands were confiscated.20 Collins, Peerage, vi. 546; J. Collinson, Hist. and Antiquities of Som. (1791), iii. 552-3; CP, i. 340. Recovery was slow, and more than six decades later Audley’s patrimony consisted of the Somerset seat of Nether Stowey, a handful of Staffordshire properties, and the recently acquired Dorset manor of Stalbridge. Following his marriage to a Wiltshire heiress, Audley sold his estates in the Midlands and consolidated his landholdings in the West Country.21 C142/140/159; J. Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 671; CPR, 1575-8, pp. 96-7, 142, 163, 268. Nevertheless, his marital settlement was less lucrative than he might have hoped, and brought him only the reversion of some of his father-in-law’s less valuable properties. Although accounted England’s second most senior baron, Audley was also one of the country’s poorest peers, with an estimated annual gross rental income of less than £900 at the end of the century.22 C.B. Herrup, A House in Gross Disorder, 11; C142/352/130; LJ, i. 729b; L. Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 760.

In these somewhat straitened circumstances, Audley sought to enhance his standing, and perhaps also his finances, through military service. On campaign in the Low Countries in 1586, he was knighted after distinguishing himself at the battle of Zutphen, but his only other reward was a grant of three Welsh manors and the command of Llandovery castle, which carried a small annuity.23 Letters and Memorials of State ed. A. Collins, i. 53-4; CPR, 1587-8 ed. S.R. Neal (L. and I. Soc. ccc), 58. In 1591 he served under Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex, during a brief English expedition to France. He also accompanied him eight years later to Ireland, where he again won plaudits for his military conduct.24 HMC Hatfield, iv. 169; Chamberlain Letters, i. 72; CSP Ire. 1600, p. 386. Audley remained in Ireland after Essex quit the kingdom in late 1599, and was seriously wounded during the siege of Kinsale two years later. By then he had begun to invest in Irish land, though his efforts to secure a substantial estate in the province of Munster came to nothing.25 CSP Ire. 1600, p. 386; 1600-1, p. 311; 1601-3, pp. 121, 166; HMC Hatfield, x. 353.

Audley attended the opening of the first Jacobean Parliament, but sat in the Lords for only four days before falling sick. On 5 Apr. 1604 it was announced that he had leave to take the waters at Bath, in Somerset, and he did not return before the end of the session. In his absence Henry Howard^*, earl of Northampton acted as his proxy.26 LJ, ii. 263a, 274b. Prior to his illness, Audley used his time in London to resume his requests to the government for a grant of lands, hoping that James I would abate ‘the ruins and downfall of an old and decayed house’. The details of his suit are not known, but upon its rejection in December that year he petitioned instead for Irish lands worth £100. With only slight exaggeration, he informed Robert Cecil^*, Viscount Cranborne (later 1st earl of Salisbury): ‘I have fought for it; I have lost my blade and limbs, and have been oftentimes like also to lose my life’.27 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 52, 384; Add. 12506, f. 309.

In February 1605 the crown finally authorized a grant of Irish property, ‘in consideration of his good service to the late queen in Ireland and elsewhere’, but left Audley himself to negotiate the details. Identifying lands of an appropriate value proved a complex task, and in the following November Salisbury blocked the transfer of a lease in County Kildare because Robert Devereux^*, 3rd earl of Essex, had a rival claim on that estate.28 CSP Ire. 1603-6, pp. 258-9, 347-8; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 140. Such problems obliged Audley to spend the bulk of his time in Ireland, and consequently he failed to attend the parliamentary sessions of 1605-6 and 1606-7, apparently without designating a proxy. Nevertheless, his financial situation remained weak, and in March 1608 he again turned to Salisbury, this time in search of employment. Three months later Ireland’s lord deputy was instructed to find Audley a role, and at length he was admitted to membership of the Irish Privy Council in the spring of 1609.29 HMC Hatfield, xx. 112; CSP Ire. 1606-8, p. 581. By this time Audley had also acquired an important ally, the Irish attorney general, Sir John Davies^‡, who married his daughter Eleanor, though he must have put his finances under additional strain by agreeing to a £6,000 dowry.30 HP Commons, 1604-29, iv. 27; C78/393/6. Meanwhile, the Flight of the Earls in September 1607, and the failure of O’Doherty’s rising the following year, cleared the way for an extensive plantation of Ulster. In July 1609 Audley put himself forward as a large-scale undertaker, requesting a grant of 100,000 acres in County Tyrone or County Armagh, on which he proposed to build 33 castles and towns within four years. While the English government was impressed, the Irish administration no longer favoured such huge schemes. The lord deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, proved particularly sceptical, warning that Audley was unlikely to make a success of this project, given his reluctance to spend money on his own house in Munster. When Chichester continued to block the proposal, Audley took his case to England. In January 1610 he suggested to Salisbury that the lord deputy was acting out of personal spite, and warned that he now faced ruin, having already sold land elsewhere to raise funds and made over his English estates to his son, Mervyn Tuchet^*, to induce him to join in this undertaking.31 CSP Ire. 1608-10, pp. 258-9, 297-8, 319; SP14/52/24; P. Robinson, Plantation of Ulster, 62.

Audley missed the start of the first parliamentary session of 1610, and once more appointed the earl of Northampton as his proxy. However, he attended the Lords intermittently from mid March until late June, ultimately participating in 24 out of a possible 95 sittings, despite again obtaining leave, on 19 Apr., to visit Bath for his health. On 26 May, in the aftermath of Henri IV’s assassination, he helped to deliver a petition to James I from both Houses requesting fresh safeguards to protect the monarch. Present on 4 June for the creation of Prince Henry as prince of Wales, he took the oath of allegiance four days later.32 Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 209; LJ, ii. 603a, 609b; T. Rymer, Foedera, vii. pt. 2, p. 169. Over the course of the session Audley was nominated to committees for three bills concerning the recruitment of mariners, the avoidance of debts, and the Cornish estates of John Arundell^‡ of Trerice. He once more withdrew from the Lords just over a week before the session ended, and never sat again.33 LJ, ii. 572b, 601b, 619a.

On 1 June 1610 Audley assigned his existing Irish property to Mervyn Tuchet in return for an annuity of £500.34 CPR Ire. Jas. I, 195. While such a step normally indicated imminent retirement, he was actually now on the brink of the breakthrough in Ireland that he had sought for the previous decade. Having finally conceded defeat over his grandiose County Tyrone proposal, he instead offered to participate in the government’s scheme for the general plantation of Ulster, of which his son-in-law Davies was one of the principal architects. Audley was one of only two English peers to volunteer as an undertaker (the other being Richard Fiennes^*, 7th Lord Saye and Sele), and his longstanding enthusiasm for this task was rewarded with an exceptionally generous grant of lands. First, in September that year he was granted 500 acres in the barony of Orier, County Armagh, with the reversion of a further 2,000 acres. Then, six months later, following further complex negotiations, he and his immediate family, including Davies, secured the whole of Omagh barony in County Tyrone. This latter grant was described at the time as comprising 11,000 acres, but in modern measurements the property in fact extended to nearly 225,000 acres.35 CSP Ire. 1608-10, pp. 467, 494; 1611-14, pp. xvi, 1-2; CPR Ire. Jas. I, 222; CSP Carew, 1603-24, pp. 224, 231; J. McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester, 152; G. Hill, Hist. Acct. of the Plantation of Ulster, 268. This was a vast estate, but it was undeveloped. Indeed, Davies described Omagh as ‘the most barren and desolate piece of land in all Ulster’. As an undertaker Audley was obliged to improve these properties, but he lacked the necessary resources and incentives. A report in early 1613 found that he had still not done anything at Orier, while at Omagh, although he was building himself a house, there were no new castles or fortified settlements, and indeed no English or Scottish settlers.36 CSP Ire. 1611-14, p. 538; HMC Hastings, iv. 176, 180-1.

In March 1613 Audley, though he lacked an Irish title, was summoned by writ to the Irish House of Lords. This was a part of a strategy first suggested in 1611 for securing a clear Protestant majority in the upper House. However Audley failed to grasp this opportunity to win the crown’s approval. Instead, two months later, he informed Lord Deputy Chichester that he viewed his summons as insulting since he was accustomed to being a senior baron in the English Parliament, whereas now he would be the most junior member of the Irish House of Lords. Accordingly he requested leave of absence, and when the Parliament reconvened in 1615 the king withdrew his summons. Surprisingly, given his determination to stand on his dignity, Audley also failed to attend the English Parliament in 1614.37 CP, iii. 86; CSP Carew, 1603-24, pp. 147-8; HMC Hastings, iv. 14, 285; CSP Ire. 1615-25, p. 24.

In December 1614 Audley informed his son-in-law Davies that he had now filled his plantation with English and Scottish settlers. The reality was rather different, for an official survey five years later found that only Davies’ share of the Omagh lands showed significant signs of development. Nevertheless, over the next few months Audley managed to convince the king that he had made a great success of his plantation despite the unfavourable conditions, and in October 1615 he secured a revised grant on more favourable terms.38 CSP Ire. 1611-14, pp. 539-40; 1615-25, pp. 92-3; CSP Carew, 1603-24, pp. 410-11. Indeed James, still grateful for Audley’s early backing for the Ulster plantation, even addressed his concerns about his status in Ireland. In September 1616 Audley became earl of Castlehaven, a small town near Kinsale. His patent cited his military service in the Netherlands, France and Ireland, especially the Kinsale campaign, to justify his creation, but the antiquarian scholar William Camden observed that the grant’s real purpose was to enable Audley to outrank all the Irish barons.39 CPR Ire. Jas. I, 304; ‘Camden Diary’ (1693), 20.

Castlehaven had little time to enjoy his new status, for he died in Ireland in February 1617, his titles passing to his son Mervyn.40 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 71. Having already settled his estates, he presumably felt no need to write a will. In the following January administration of some personal effects, worth barely £80, was granted at Westminster to his brother-in-law, Sir Charles Noel. His daughter Lady Eleanor Douglas, Sir John Davies’ widow, obtained a second grant, presumably with wider scope, from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in July 1631. As the 2nd earl of Castlehaven had been executed two months earlier, and his property confiscated, this was most likely a desperate attempt to salvage something from the wreckage.41 WCA, PCW, Act Bk. iii. f. 41; 2206/2/34; Vis. Rutland (Harl. Soc. lxxiii), 2; PROB 6/14A, p. 41.