Henry Cuffe
politician
Sir Henry Cuffe (1563 – 13 March 1601) was an English writer and politician, executed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, for treason.
Biography
Family connections
Born in 1563 at Hinton St George, Somerset, he was the youngest son of Robert Cuffe of Donyatt in that county. Of the same family, although the relationship does not seem to have been definitely settled, was Hugh Cuffe, who in 1598 was granted large estates in the county of Cork, and whose grandson Maurice wrote an account of the defence of Ballyalley Castle, County Clare, when besieged in the rebellion of 1641. Maurice Cuffe's journal was printed by the Camden Society in 1841, and the writer's grandnephew John was created Baron Desart in the Irish peerage in 1733 (the first baron's grandson, Otway Cuffe, became viscount in 1781, and Earl of Desart in 1793, and these titles are still extant). To another branch of the Somerset family of Cuffe belonged Thomas Cuffe of Crych, who went to Ireland in 1641, and whose son James was knighted by Charles II and granted land in Mayo and Galway. In 1797 James Cuffe (d. 1821), in direct line of descent from this Sir James Cuffe, was made Baron Tyrawley of Ballinrobe, County Mayo.
Early life
After receiving his early education at the grammar school of Hinton St. George, Henry Cuffe was elected at the age of fifteen a scholar of Trinity College, Oxford (25 May 1578) by the interest of Lady Elizabeth Powlett of Hinton, who always showed a kindly regard for his welfare. At Oxford, Cuffe exhibited a conspicuous ability, and became a finished Greek scholar.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as politician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5720024. VIAF identifies the subject as 34800760. The Library of Congress control number is nr93026335. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1563, 1601, 1598 and 1641.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry Cuffe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.