Henry Bourchier, 5th Earl of Bath

Who was Henry Bourchier, 5th Earl of Bath?

Sir Henry Bourchier, 5th Earl of Bath of Tawstock in Devon, was an English peer who held the office of Lord Privy Seal and was a large landowner in Ireland in counties Limerick and Armagh, and in England in Devon, Somerset and elsewhere. Following his inheritance of the Earldom of Bath from his distant cousin, in 1637 he moved from his native Ireland to Tawstock Court in Devon, a county previously unknown to him where he knew few people. As the most senior resident nobleman in the county he was destined to play the leading role for the Royalist cause in Devon during the Civil War but before the outbreak of hostilities he was captured in 1642 and imprisoned by the Parliamentarians before he had organised his local forces. In the opinion of Clarendon he was a man of "sour-tempered unsocial behaviour" who "had no excellent or graceful pronunciation" and "neither had or ever meant to do the king the least service".