Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Paulet, Charles (1625?-1699)
PAULET or POWLETT, CHARLES, first Duke of Bolton (1625?–1699), eldest son of John, fifth marquis of Winchester [q. v.], by his first wife, was born about 1625. He was elected for Winchester in the Convention parliament of 1660, and represented Hampshire from 1661 to 1675. He was lord lieutenant of the same county from 1667 to 1676, and he succeeded his father as Marquis of Winchester on 5 March 1675, and was created a privy councillor in 1679. He did not occupy a prominent place in parliament, but at the crisis of Charles II's reign he sided rather strongly with the whigs. One of his dominant motives appears to have been a violent antipathy to Halifax, and when Peterborough, during the debate on the exclusion bill, said that it was a case in which every man in England was obliged to draw sword, and laid his hand upon his own, Bolton got as near as he could to Halifax, ‘being resolved to make sure of him in case any violence had been offered’ (Burnet). Similarly, in 1689, again aiming at Halifax, he moved in the House of Lords for a committee to examine who had the chief hand in the severities and executions at the end of Charles II's reign. Bolton was greatly perturbed at the turn affairs took upon the accession of James II, and was much puzzled as to the line of policy that he should adopt. As a way out of his perplexity, he seems to have counterfeited a disordered mind. This, he subsequently avowed, he considered the best means of security against the dangers of the time; but certain of those who knew him best considered that a measure of real insanity was at the bottom of his diplomacy. In the summer of 1687 Bolton travelled about England with four coaches and a retinue of one hundred horsemen, sleeping during the day, and giving extravagant entertainments at night. In 1688 he was one of the lords who protested against the corporation act. He corresponded with William of Orange, and upon his landing took an active side in promoting his interest. On 2 Jan. 1689 he was one of the noblemen who presented the nonconformist deputation to William at St. James's (Boyer, William III, p. 169), and on 9 April in the same year he was created Duke of Bolton (ib. p. 209). He was also restored to his place in the privy council and to the lord-lieutenancy of Hampshire.
He did not take a very active part in the intrigues of William's court, though Marlborough is said to have owed his disgrace in 1692 to Bolton's disclosure to the king of a conversation he had had with him. He was profoundly jealous of Marlborough's influence, and communicated this feeling to his son, the second duke. Burnet, who had come into close contact with him, and had no obvious grounds for hostility, thus sums up Bolton's character: ‘He was a man of a strange mixture; he had the spleen to a high degree, and affected an extravagant behaviour; for many weeks he would take a conceit not to speak one word, and at other times he would not open his mouth till such an hour of the day, when he thought the air was pure; he changed the day into night, and often hunted by torchlight, and took all sorts of liberties to himself, many of which were very disagreeable to those about him. In the end of King Charles's time and during King James's reign he affected an appearance of folly, which afterwards he compared to Junius Brutus's behaviour under the Tarquins. With all this he was a very knowing and a very crafty politic man, and was an artful flatterer, when that was necessary to compass his ends, in which he was generally successful; he was a man of profuse expenses, and of a most ravenous avarice to support that; and though he was much hated, yet he carried matters before him with such authority and success, that he was in all respects the great riddle of the age’ (Burnet, iv. 403).
Bolton died at Amport, Hampshire, on 27 Feb. 1699, and was buried at Wensley, Yorkshire. He was twice married: first to Christian, eldest daughter of John, baron Frescheville of Staveley (she died in childbed on 22 May 1653); and, secondly, to Mary, widow of Henry Carey, styled Lord Leppington, first of the three illegitimate daughters of Emmanuel Scrope, earl of Sunderland, [q. v.] by Martha Jeanes, ‘daughter of a poor taylor living in Turfield Heath, Buckinghamshire’ (Collect. Topogr. et Geneal. i. 223); she died at Moulins in France, on 1 Nov. 1680, leaving two sons—Charles, the second duke [q. v.], and Lord William Paulet—and three daughters. The body of the second duchess was removed to Wensley and buried there.
[Brydges's Peerage of England; Peerage of England, 1710; G. E. C.'s Complete Peerage; Doyle's Baronage of England; Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, i. 223; Macintosh's Hist. of the Revolution, p. 199; Macpherson's Original Papers, passim; Boyer's Life of William III, passim; Luttrell's Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs; Reresby's Diary, p. 247; Hatton Corresp. (Camden Soc.), ii. 147, 235; Burnet's Hist. of his own Time.]