George Anselm Touchet

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Infobox Christian leader

|name = {{unbulleted list

| Anselm}}

| honorific-suffix = OSB

| religion = Roman Catholic

| ordination = 1643

|birth_name = George Touchet

|birth_place = Stalbridge, Dorset, England

|death_date = {{circa|1689}}

| parents = {{unbulleted list|

• Mervyn Tuchet
• Elizabeth Brydges

}}

|title = Chaplain to the Queen
Catherine of Braganza

|term_start = 1671

|term_end= 1678

}}

George Anselm Touchet, also spelt Tuchet, (born after 1618 – died 1689 or earlier) was an English Roman Catholic monk who was chaplain of Catherine of Braganza, consort of Charles II, from 1671 till his banishment in 1675.[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14795a.htm George Anselm Touchet]

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.Thompson Cooper, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27575 ‘Touchet, George (d. before 1689?)’], rev. Dom Aidan Bellenger, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 10 Jan 2009 In 1643 Touchet became a Benedictine 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 Catherine, 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. The 1678 private act of Parliament

reversing his father's attainder specifically excluded him from succeeding to his elder brother's peerages and estates, which in 1684 passed to their younger brother, Mervyn.{{multiref|

29 & 30 Cha. 2. c. 17 Pr.; printed as [https://books.google.com/books?id{{=}}Jvm3du9Vx68C&pg{{=}}PA346 "Fourth Report, Appendix no. 3"], Lords Committees Touching the Dignity of a Peer of the Realm (18 May 1829) Reports Vol II, p. 346 |

The Complete Peerage 2nd ed. Vol 1 p 394

}} An abridged version of his manuscript translation of a devotional work by the French mystic Constantine Barbanson (1581–1632) was published in 1928 as The Secret Paths of Divine Love.Michael Mullett, in his introduction to fascimile extracts from Historical collections, claims The Secret Paths of Divine Love was published by the Ascetical Society in 1858. Mullett, ed., English Catholicism 1680-1830. Volume I. English Catholic Writings on Religious Controversies 1685-1736, 2006, pp. 217-8