User talk:Ww2censor/Brian Tuke

Posts copied from User talk:Choess/Archive4
I am slowly working on a draft of Brian Tuke and see him mentioned as Treasurer of the Privy Purse. I am wondering if this is the same as Keeper of the Privy Purse which I see you edited recently. Some of your edits seem to be British parliament related, so I thought I would ask you for some help. Tuke seems to have had severeal other positions during Henry VIIIs reign but most have no articles or maybe newer titles. TIA (I reply where the discussion starts, so I am watching you, for a while at least) ww2censor (talk) 18:18, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Doing some trawling in Google Books, Tuke appears mostly to be described as Treasurer of the Chamber (1528–1545), French secretary (1523–?), and Clerk of the Parliaments (1523–1539). (Evidently the old DNB is erroneous in calling him "Treasurer of the Household".) That he was Treasurer of the Chamber is quite certain; this had for a while been the predominant financial office under the late Plantagenets and early Tudors, but Thomas Cromwell began to curtail its importance for his own purposes during Tuke's tenure. In addition, I quote from the ODNB: "Between 1529 and 1532 Norris, as keeper of the privy purse, had taken over many payments previously the responsibility of Brian Tuke, treasurer of the chamber." We don't have an article on the Clerk of the Signet, but it is an established office which lasted down to 1851 (ref), so we probably will eventually. I question the veracity of the Walker passage describing Tuke as "Treasurer of the Privy Purse" and "Under-Treasurer of England". Sir Richard Weston seems to have occupied the latter post during most of the period during which Tuke flourished (1528–1542), and he was replaced by Sir John Baker. (Edylne's Law-dictionary identifies this post with that of under-treasurer of the Exchequer, now united with the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer.) I find no other references to a British "Treasurer of the Privy Purse" that do not really refer to the Keeper of the Privy Purse, and Tuke certainly was not appointed to that office. Let me know if there's anything else I can clear up for you. Choess (talk) 00:29, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Please would you do a stub for Clerk of the Signet - presumanbly a Senior fore-runner to Writer to the Signet. - Kittybrewster  &#9742;  00:55, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Do you know if it was a sinecure office, as I imagine Sir Brook Taylor was on the continent most of the time? Craigy (talk) 08:57, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah yes. Might've helped if I'd read the whole article! Thanks for the further insight. Craigy (talk) 15:45, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Which Walker book are you questioning the veracity of? "Haste, Post, Haste! Postmen and Post-roads through the Ages" or "Writing Under Tyranny English Literature and the Henrician Reformation". Thanks ww2censor (talk) 00:44, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Text from Oxford DNB
Tuke, Sir Brian (d. 1545), administrator, was the son of Richard Tuke (d. 1498?), of Kent, and his wife, Agnes Bland of Nottinghamshire. His father may have been a member of the household of Thomas Howard, second duke of Norfolk. By 1518 Tuke had married Grisilde Boughton (d. 1538) of Woolwich, and together they had four daughters and three sons.

Tuke entered the household of Henry VII as a clerk of the spicery some time before 1506, when he was appointed feodary of Wallingford. Two years later, now a signet clerk, he received the post of bailiff of Sandwich (which he held until 1524). Following Henry VIII's accession he continued as a signet clerk, and his responsibilities multiplied rapidly. In October 1510 he was named clerk of the council at Calais, and was soon master of the posts, in charge of the system of diplomatic couriers. In his secretarial work he drafted letters on behalf of the busy Cardinal Wolsey, served as a messenger between king and minister, and handled correspondence with ambassadors abroad. In September 1513 he was present at the English capture of Tournai, and he was knighted three years later.

Owing to the demands of attendance upon king and cardinal, Tuke surrendered his Calais clerkship in 1520. In March 1523 he was promoted to the post of French secretary, and the following month succeeded John Taylor as clerk of parliaments. As a councillor and French secretary he assisted in negotiating the treaty of the More with France (August 1525), and was among those subsequently rewarded with a pension by François I. By early 1528 he was busier than ever, for in addition to his own work he was filling in for Wolsey's absent secretary Stephen Gardiner. It was about this time that he sat for the painter Hans Holbein (whose portrait of Tuke now hangs in the National Gallery, Washington). In June 1528 he joined Bishop Cuthbert Tunstal in negotiating a truce with France and Flanders at Hampton Court, and defended its terms before a dissatisfied Henry VIII. That same month the king made his secretary privy to ‘the other secret matter of his will’ (the divorce), and set him to work drafting a book on the subject.

On 13 April 1528 Tuke attained his highest office, with his appointment as treasurer of the chamber. Since its heyday under Sir John Heron (d. 1522), however, the chamber's central role in royal finances had steadily been eroded, and the allocation of much of its former revenue to other financial departments left its new treasurer chronically short of funds. During the 1530s Tuke repeatedly petitioned Thomas Cromwell (in vain) to restore subsidy and other revenues to the chamber, while at the same time peppering him with memoranda advocating reforms of chamber administration. Despite this new responsibility he continued his work as royal secretary and councillor; for example, during the uprisings of 1536 he was a member of the London council and organized the vital posts between the capital and the north. Nevertheless, by the end of the decade there were growing complaints that he was neglecting his many duties. In response to these concerns (and his advanced age) he surrendered his parliamentary clerkship in 1539, and a successor as French secretary was appointed three years later. On 1 May 1542, however, Tuke (as treasurer of the chamber) was named treasurer of the new court of general surveyors, responsible for the administration of crown lands.

In addition to his administrative work, Tuke found occasion to pursue scholarly interests. At the request of William Thynne (a colleague in the royal household), he wrote the preface to his 1532 edition of Chaucer's works, arguing for the poet's pivotal role in the development of the English language. John Bale records that he completed a (lost) treatise attacking Polydore Vergil. He supplied the antiquary John Leland with medieval manuscripts; Leland in turn included a total of nine poems in his Encomia praising the virtues of his friend, the ‘Gazophylax camerae’: ‘Quanto privatus minor extat principe, tanto / Maior Romano, Tucca Britannus erit’ (Leland, 23).

Sir Brian Tuke owned a house in St Margaret Lothbury, London, as well as properties at Stepney, and at Pyrgo in the royal manor of Havering, Essex, of which he was briefly steward (1536–7). Following the dissolution of Waltham Abbey he purchased the manor of South Weald, Essex, in 1541, and the next year acquired a fine dwelling at nearby Layer Marney, which became his principal residence. He served as an Essex JP (1515–45), as well as on the Middlesex (1528–45) and Surrey (1528–32) commissions of the peace. In November 1533 he was pricked as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire, and was included in the 1535 commission compiling the valor ecclesiasticus for Essex.

From the mid-1520s onwards Tuke was afflicted with a succession of illnesses which incapacitated him for months at a time and placed him regularly in the care of physicians (who on one occasion included Henry VIII himself). His difficulties as treasurer of the chamber and the constant demands of royal creditors added to his woes, and in the summer of 1545 secretary Wriothesley reported that Tuke was ‘run out of town [to Essex] … because he hath no money’ (LP Henry VIII, 20/2, no. 453). Ill and weary, on 26 September 1545 he drafted his will, which opens with a lengthy meditation on man's mortality (presumably penned by Tuke himself). He died at Layer Marney one month later, on 26 October 1545, and was buried beside his wife in the London church of St Margaret, Lothbury.

P. R. N. Carter Sources  LP Henry VIII · G. R. Elton, The Tudor revolution in government (1953) · W. C. Richardson, Tudor chamber administration, 1485–1547 (1952) · J. Leland, Principum, ac illustrium aliquot et eruditorum in Anglia virorum (1589) · CPR, 1494–1509VCH Essex, vol. 8 · G. R. Elton, ‘The materials of parliamentary history’, Studies in Tudor and Stuart politics and government, 3 (1983), 58–155 · M. K. McIntosh, A community transformed: the manor and liberty of Havering, 1500–1620 (1991) · D. S. Chambers, ed., Faculty office registers, 1534–1549 (1966) · R. G. Lang, ed., Two Tudor subsidy assessment rolls for the city of London, 1541 and 1582, London RS, 29 (1993) · M. McKisack, Medieval history in the Tudor age (1971) · will, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/31, sig. 1 · J. Stow, The survey of London (1912) [with introduction by H. B. Wheatley] · P. Ganz, The paintings of Hans Holbein (1950) · R. R. Tatlock, ‘Sir Bryan Tuke, by Holbein’, Burlington Magazine, 42 (1923), 246–51 · Nichols, Lit. anecdotes, vol. 9 Archives  BL, Arundel MS 97 · BL, Cotton MSS · BL, Stowe MS 554 · TNA: PRO, Exchequer accounts, E 101 · TNA: PRO, state papers, Henry VIII, SP 1 Likenesses  H. Holbein the younger, oils, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC [see illus.] · H. Holbein the younger, oils, Cleveland Museum of Arts, Ohio · portrait (after H. Holbein the younger), Alte Pinakothek, Munich © Oxford University Press 2004–8 All rights reserved: see legal notice P. R. N. Carter, ‘Tuke, Sir Brian (d. 1545)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 21 Nov 2008

Sir Brian Tuke (d. 1545): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27803

Also see DNB: Tuke, Brian (DNB00)