The New Murrey and Blue blog

Recently I had a rare opportunity to visit Church House in Salisbury. Used for administration of the diocese today, it is an attractive medieval/post-medieval building retaining many original features, and has an interesting but sometimes rather murky past.

Originally it was built in the 15th century by a merchant called William Lightfoot, and was known in that era as The Falcon.

However, later it came into the possession of the Audley family (Tuchet) and in the early 1600’s was scene of a rather unsavoury scandal. Mervyn Tuchet, Lord Audley, was accused of rape and sodomy by his second wife, Anne. Apparently, Mervyn had a fetish for three in a bed and also took male servants and poor men from the streets to be his lovers. He would make all the household ‘come and watch’ his bedroom antics too…

Eventually his wife had enough (although some said that for many years she was his accomplice) and, with Mervyn’s eldest son from his first marriage, James, lodged an official complaint against him for rape. Tuchet pleaded innocence but was found guilty of both rape and sodomy. He was executed on Tower Hill as were his lovers Laurence FitzPatrick and Giles Browning.

Later, Church House was donated by the Tuchet family to become a workhouse.

The forebears of Mervyn Tuchet and his wife Anne are interesting to discover. Mervyn was a descendant of Margaret Darrell/Dayrell, the half-sister of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. Margaret married James Tuchet around 1483. Through Margaret, Mervyn was also a descendant of ‘the other Margaret Beaufort’ who was the daughter of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset.

Tuchet’s wife Anne was a Stanley, daughter of Fernando, 5th Earl of Derby and his wife Alice Spencer. She was not only a descendant of our old friend, the infamously side-swapping Thomas Stanley, but also descended from Henry VII’s daughter Mary. At one time, as Elizabeth I approached death, there was actual talk of Fernando having a good claim to the throne. (So we almost had a ‘King Fernando’!) Anne’s first marriage had been to Gray Bridges, Baron Chandos of Sudeley, and during that time, she had lived in style at Sudeley Castle–which was once owned by Richard III and was also strongly connected with Edward IV’s ‘secret wife’, Lady Eleanor Talbot, who had lived there with her first husband, Thomas Butler/Boteler.