In the days when great officers of State held the lucrative office of Keeper of the Jewel House in addition to their other benefices was one William Paulet, who later became 1st Marquis of Winchester. Of good birth and a country squire, he was knighted in 1525, and the same year made a Privy Councillor. Shortly after he became a Member of Parliament as Knight of the shire of Hampshire, and also secured the curious appointment of “Surveyor of the King’s widows, and Governor of all idiots and naturals in the King’s hands.” This apparently led by easy degrees to Controller of the Royal Household. In 1536 Sir William Paulet was one of the judges at the trials of Sir Thomas More, and Bishop Fisher, and also of the gentlemen with whom Queen Anne Boleyn was accused of too familiar consort. [Illustration: THOMAS CROMWELL, EARL OF ESSEX KEEPER OF THE JEWEL HOUSE IN THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII] A year later the Knight became a Baron, under the title of Lord St. John, and Treasurer of the Royal Household, whilst not long after he became a Knight of the Garter and Lord Chamberlain. When Henry VIII died he was Lord President of the Council, and must have sincerely thanked God that he had so far survived and prospered and had seen the end of that monarch’s reign, with his head still on his shoulders. The Lord President was one of the eighteen executors of Henry VIII’s will, appointed to act as a council of regency during the minority of the boy King, Edward VI. In 1550 St. John sided with the Duke of Northumberland in the overthrow of Somerset, the Lord Protector, and as a result found himself on the winning side with an earldom, that of Wiltshire thrown in. He received also the offices of Lord Treasurer and Keeper of the Jewel House. A year later we find plain William Paulet of a few years ago created Marquis of Winchester.