Mervyn Tuchet
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| “ | Thou art young, lusty, and well-favoured. I am old, and cannot live long, my wife wholly delighting in lust, which I am neither able nor willing to satisfy, thou mayest do well to lie with her: and so pleasing her, after my death marry her, and thereby raise thy fortune. | „ |
| ~ Tuchet soliciting Giles Broadway to rape his wife. |
Mervyn Tuchet/Touchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, Lord Audley (1593 - 1631) was an English nobleman who was executed for his sexual perversions, which included watching as his male lovers sexually assaulted his wife Lady Anne Stanley and his stepdaughter Elizabeth Bridges.
Crimes edit
Knighted in 1608, Castlehaven married Elizabeth Barnham on an unknown date and had six children. While this marriage was loving and successful by all accounts, Elizabeth died in 1622. Two years later, Castlehaven married the former Lady Anne Stanley. The day after the marriage, it was claimed, each and every one of the male servants were called to the marital chamber, and Anne was forced by her husband to "look upon them, and to commend those that had the longest". This would prove to be a sign of things to come.
Over the following days, Tuchet would take part in orgies with several of his male servants while Anne watched. These servants included Henry Skipwith (Lady Anne's page), a homeless man named Fitzpatrick and stable master Amptil. According to Skipwith, he mostly had sex with Tuchet, but also "lay with" Amptil and Lady Anne. At one point, Anne was impregnated by Skipwith, but the child died. On one occasion, Tuchet coerced Skipwith to have sex with Anne's twelve-year-old daughter Elizabeth (who had married Tuchet's son James) in front of other servants. Tuchet also arranged for Amptil to marry one of his other children. Eventually, he took another lover: a sailor named Giles Broadway. As well as sleeping with Broadway and Fitzpatrick at the same time, Castlehaven repeatedly asked him to have sex with Anne. When Broadway finally agreed, Tuchet held Anne's arms behind her back while Broadway raped her.
Eventually, Tuchet's son James made a criminal complaint against him as revenge for Tuchet's mistreatment of him. Tuchet was charged with rape and sodomy (as it was illegal for two men to have sex at the time) in 1631; it is believed he was charged because he was suspected of being Catholic. His defence to the sodomy charges was that he had never actually penetrated Broadway, and that his love for Skipwith was permitted by holy scripture. He also claimed that Broadway and Fitzpatrick (who testified at the trial) had been paid to lie against him by James, and that his wife was "a lusty whore" who wanted a younger husband. He was unanimously convicted of rape and convicted of sodomy by a majority of 15-11. Tuchet appealed to Charles I of England, who postponed his execution so he could repent. He was ultimately beheaded on May 14 after protesting his innocence one last time; Broadway and Fitzpatrick were executed a few weeks later.