Much might be written about the early Paulets from Pawlet, near Bridgwater, and their descendant who wedded a Deneband, and so came to Hinton St. George; but in this family the chief interest centres in the early sixteenth century and the age of Elizabeth. In the mailed warriors under the north wall with their dames in curious head-dresses we see probably the warlike Sir Amias, who helped defeat Lambert Simnel at Newark in the days of Henry VII., built much at Hinton, and left his mark on the Middle Temple in London, where chiefly he lived. Beyond lies his son Sir Hugh, who helped Henry VIII. in his French war with Francis I., and is said to have put Wolsey in the stocks when he was a youth at Lymington School. This Sir Hugh perhaps helped to bring misfortune on the house, for he had the ill-fated office laid upon him of being supervisor of all the manors, etc., lately belonging to Richard Whiting, last abbot of Glastonbury. But by far the most interesting monument in the whole church is that in the west wall of this chapel to the memory of Sir Amyas Poulett, son of Sir Hugh, and gaoler of Mary Queen of Scots during the last two years of her life. It is seldom indeed that so much personal character is expressed in marble as in the curious veins of this pale alabaster. One would think that many a Londoner must have paused, struck by the stern even irritable face, before the monument was removed from St. Martin’s, where it was situate so long under the same roof as Nell Gwynne and many another notable. How strangely it brings us into touch with past times to look at this strong face of the man who had so much to put up with! There he lies motionless in ruff and doublet upon a marble pillow, and yet he moved in the stirring world we know so well from Froude’s vivid pages and Alexandre Dumas’ bustling novels. In 1576 he was sent ambassador by Elizabeth to that frivolous court of Henry III., the king of favourites, who lives again in the pages of _Chicot the Jester_, with his swarms of little spaniels and his effeminate hands smeared with cream, surrounded by the plots and counter-plots of the Guises and the aged queen-mother Catherine of Medici.