Following his inheritance of the Earldom of Bath from his distant cousin, in 1637 he moved from his native Ireland to Tawstock Court in Devon,[2] a county previously unknown to him where he knew few people.

As the most senior resident nobleman in the county he was destined to play the leading role for the Royalist cause in Devon during the Civil War but before the outbreak of hostilities, he was captured in 1642 and imprisoned by the Parliamentarians before he had organised his local forces.

[4] Although not Devonshire born and bred like many of his predecessor earls, he was the most senior noble resident in the county, and thus might have been expected, as later proved false, to wield "notable power and interest" among the local population.

[5] In June 1642, Bourchier's servants moved his household from his London townhouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields to Tawstock in Devon, but were ordered to travel lightly to avoid suspicion.

[6] On 19 July 1642 King Charles I, in an unconstitutional act and without the assent of Parliament, issued a commission of array for Devonshire to Henry Bourchier and 27 other nobles and leading gentlemen.

[5] On 9 August 1642 an inquest into the looming civil conflict was held at the Exeter Assizes the jury of which appealed to Bourchier as a man of "eminency and known interest in his Majesty's favour to use his good offices toward an accommodation between his Majesty and Parliament and that war, the greatest and worst of evils, be not conceived and chosen for a means to heal our distempers rather than a parliament, the cheapest and best remedy".

[8] On 13 August 1642, in an attempt to defeat the anti-Royalist propagandists, Bourchier published the text of his commission of array, and issued a statement to the county of Devon that he had "undertaken nothing contrary to the lawes of this kingdom, nor prejudicial or hurtful to any that shall observe it".

On Bourchier's sudden appearance on the scene with a body of cavaliers, the population became greatly alarmed and started to arm and reinforce their town's defences.

He had attempted to soften up the mayor and corporation beforehand with a meal of venison which he had sent his cook from Tawstock to prepare, and which is shown as an expense of 19 shillings 10 d. in his surviving household accounts.

[11] On Tuesday, 13 September 1642, Bourchier accompanied by a substantial group of local royalist gentry entered South Molton for the purpose of reading his commission and raising troops, but was met by an angry mob of over 1,000 persons who were "in a great rage with the mayor and his company for giving licence that they should enter and swore that if they did attempt anything there or read their commission of array they would beat them all down and kill them (even) if they were all hanged for it".

A Banquet being provided at Henry Hearders house the Inne-keeper, where the Earle sent store of Venison, and his owne Cooke for to dresse it, the common sort of the Towne fell in a great rage with the Maior and his company, for giving licence that they should enter, and swor that if they did attempt any thing there, or read their Commission of Array, they would beate them all downe and kill them, if they were all hanged for it; and thereupon betooke themselves to Armes, both men, women, and children, about the Crosse in the Market place.

[12]On 15 August 1642 Bourchier rejected a summons from the House of Lords which required his attendance at Parliament, and stated as his reason that he wished to avoid the "interruptions and menaces and affronts by people in London and Westminster" he had suffered in the previous session.

For this action he was publicly criticised by certain royalists for having abandoned his post, and petitioned the king for redress to what he viewed as slander, stating that he feared for his safety and was thus entitled to withdraw.

[14] In November 1648, the sequestrator drew up a room-by-room inventory of the contents of Tawstock Court, which survives,[17] providing valuable insight into the arrangement of what was then the grandest house in Devon, since burnt down and rebuilt.

Rachel's monument exists in St Peter's Church, Tawstock, in Devon, given by the Diocese of Bath and Wells,[18] a white marble life-size standing female figure by Balthasar Burman, a replica of the statue made in 1671/1672 by his father Thomas Burman of Mary Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury (1556–1632), which is situated in a niche in the Shrewsbury Tower of Second Court, the building of which she financed, in St John's College, Cambridge.

[3][19] The Latin inscription is as follows: Rachel Comitissa Henrico digna, vix altera e sexu vel animo, vel virtute aequipollens Rebus domesticis, civilibus, sacris, ingenio plusquam virili, at materno (quo suo tempore vix maius dabatur in terris) Ecclesiae Anglicanae Filia humilis, et devota, et iniquis temporibus eiectorum Patrum mater et hie pene unica fautrix Unicum Lugendum quod in se perjisset nobile Bourchieri nomen, ni sat illa habuit virtutum vel illud immortale reddere Et liset improlis plus mille liberorum Parens, quos liberalissime educavit, dotavit, sacravit, et nobilitavit.

[20] This alone was worthy of our tears, that in her the noble name of Bourchier would have been extinct if she had not been endowed with virtues sufficient even to render it immortal and though she was childless yet she was parent to more than a thousand children, whom in a very genteel manner she brought up, gave portions to, consecrated and even ennobled.

His widow erected in the south aisle chapel of Tawstock Church a large monument to her husband,[b] deemed "splendid" by Pevsner,[22] "massive and ugly" by Hoskins[23] and "almost unequalled in singularity and absurdity" by Marland.

The lesser entailed English estate in Devon centred on Tawstock, passed elsewhere, to the Wrey family, descended from one of the three daughters of the 3rd Earl of Bath.

Most of the estate in Armagh, at least 6,000 acres (24 km2), lying between Tandragee and Portadown, was granted to Henry's elder brother John (died 1614) by a patent of James I (J.I.8) on 30 November 1610.

Other lands in both Limerick and Armagh were sold to them or once belonged to Sir William St Leger (1586–1642) as shown by a Deep Poll, dated 17 July 1619.

James Granger (1723–1776) in his Biographical History of England, from Egbert the Great to the Revolution (1769) describes the Lombart engraving of the Van Dyck portrait of RACHAEL MIDDLESEXIAE comitissa: