George Anselm Touchet

Who was George Anselm Touchet?

George Anselm Touchet, also spelt Tuchet, was the Roman Catholic chaplain of Queen Catherine of Braganza, the wife of King Charles II.

The second son of Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, by his marriage to Elizabeth Barnham, and a younger brother of James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven, Touchet began life as George Tuchet in Stalbridge, Dorset. In 1631, his father was convicted and executed for various sexual crimes, including rape and sodomy. In 1643 Touchet became a Benedictine monk at St Gregory's, Douai, and was clothed a monk under the name of Anselm. After the Restoration of the Stuarts he was made chaplain to Queen Caroline, with an apartment at St James's Palace and subsequently another at Somerset House, and with an allowance of £100 a year.

Touchet's Historical collections, a work of Catholic controversy, appeared in 1674, and he was banished from England the following year. In 1682 he was debarred by an Act of Parliament from succeeding to his brother's earldom and estates. An abridged version of his manuscript translation of a devotional work by the French mystic Constantine Barbanson was published in 1928 as The Secret Paths of Divine Love.