Culme, Sir Hugh (d. 1630), army officer, was a younger son of Hugh Culme of Canonleigh, Devon, and his wife, Mary, daughter of Richard Fortescue of Filleigh, Devon; he had at least three brothers including Benjamin Culme, dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. A relative of Lord Deputy Chichester (qv), and of Faithful Fortescue (qv), he appears to have to gone to Ireland as a soldier by 1606. From 12 April 1606 to 9 December 1619 he held the office of saymaster for the testing of leather. By 1608 he was stationed at Cloughoughter castle, Co. Cavan, where he was appointed constable. He was granted a lease of Cloughoughter and surrounding lands on 8 February 1620, granted outright in December 1624; though its ward was discharged, the castle was intended for the detention of catholic priests.
Culme was granted land in Tullyhaw barony, Co. Cavan, as a servitor in the Ulster plantation, and over the next two decades he expanded his holdings in the county. He is noted as provost marshal for Cavan and district, or for Cavan and Monaghan, in 1610, 1617 and 1619, and as sheriff of Co. Cavan in 1607, 1611 and 1612. On 2 May 1613 he was returned as an MP for Cavan borough and took his place in parliament, but was unseated on the basis that the town sheriff had made unwarranted returns, not putting forward the candidates chosen by the electors; new MPs were chosen on 27 October 1614. Culme was knighted on 4 October 1623. He married Mary Emerson of Derbyshire; the couple had at least four sons and three daughters. He died 19 June 1630 at Cloughoughter. His widow may have been the ‘Dame Mary Culme’, wife and later widow of General Michael Jones (qv).