Henry Bourchier, 5th Earl of Bath
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 Limerick and Armagh counties, 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".
Henry Bourchier, 5th Earl of Bath, portrait c. 1638–1643, private collection.
Marble panel with relief sculpture of heraldic achievement of Henry Bourchier, 5th Earl of Bath, detail from his monument in Tawstock Church, Devon. The escutcheon shows 53 quarterings (as on the monument to William Bourchier, 3rd Earl of Bath in the same church), with supporters, dexter: an heraldic tiger argent; sinister: a falcon argent beaked and membered or the wings elevated vulned gules. Above is the crest of Bourchier: A man's head in profile proper ducally crowned or with a pointed cap gules; below the motto of Bourchier:
Rachel Fane, Countess Dowager of Bath (detail). Pair to the painting above
Bourchier impaling Fane, on the base of a 1679 candlestick
Tawstock is a village, civil parish and former manor in North Devon in the English county of Devon, England. The parish is surrounded clockwise from the north by the parishes of Barnstaple, Bishop's Tawton, Atherington, Yarnscombe, Horwood, Lovacott and Newton Tracey and Fremington. In 2001 it had a population of 2,093. The estimated population in June 2019 was 2,372.
St Peter's Church, Tawstock
Tawstock Church and village in 1805
Tawstock Court east front and St Peter's Church, Tawstock, viewed from Codden Hill looking westwards
Corffe, Tawstock, as rebuilt sometime between 1790 and 1822