DELIVERED AT
THE LITERARY INSTITUTION, GREENWICH,
16th FEBRUARY, 1864.
[LECTURE I.]
The Biographer of Edward, second Marquis of Worcester, naturally finds some difficulty in rendering prominent the political position that nobleman enjoyed in the 17th century; or of impressing the minds of his hearers or readers with a just sense of the wonderful genius of the author of the "Century of Inventions," even although the fact be established of that remarkable man being also the true and first inventor of a veritable steam engine.
When we consider the eventful period in which he lived, (from 1601 to 1667,) and his personal character, together with the social, political, and romantic incidents of his life, the career of the Marquis of Worcester cannot fail to interest and instruct us. He was at once the most fortunate and unfortunate of men, living in times of mingled enlightenment, superstition, and civil discord, and finally finding himself cast on the tender mercies of a corrupt Court; the possessor of a high order of mechanical genius, yet proscribed politically and theologically; most loyal, yet falling the victim of puritanism; and closing his life neglected by a Sovereign whose father had been the chief ruin of his patrimony.
Descended from the Plantagenets, Edward Somerset, second Marquis of Worcester, is supposed to have been born about, or soon after 1601, the records to establish his natal year being wanting. His father, Henry Somerset, created first Marquis of Worcester by Charles I., was married on the 16th June, 1600, at Blackfriars; Queen Elizabeth, attending in great state, graciously danced at the wedding ball; and the festivities of the occasion were continued for three days.
We obtain little information respecting the Marquis of Worcester until about the twenty-seventh year of his age, when he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Dormer, eldest son of Lord Dormer of Weng, and sister of Robert, Earl of Carnarvon. It is not known where he was educated, but it was certainly neither at Oxford nor Cambridge. Mention is made of his preceptor, Mr. Adams, at Raglan Castle, the baronial seat of the lords of Raglan, in Monmouthshire. There is every probability, however, that he finished his education at some foreign university. His son and heir, Henry, born in 1629, was created by Charles II. the first Duke of Beaufort, and from him the present Duke of Beaufort is the eighth of that rank in lineal descent.
It was during the first or second year of his married life that he engaged the services of Caspar Kaltoff, whom he employed as a practical assistant, to work out his numerous mechanical experiments, and whom he extols as an "unparalleled workman, both for trust and skill."[1] There are still to be seen on one side of the Keep—or citadel of Raglan Castle, the remains of grooves in the wall, probably for the insertion of large metal pipes, in some way or other connected with the waterworks which are known to have been erected there, and which were most likely carried out by Kaltoff, under his master's directions.
Becoming a widower in 1635, his lordship married in 1639, his second wife, Margaret, second daughter and co-heir of Henry O'Brien, Earl of Thomond.
It must have been about this period of his life that the Marquis of Worcester made one of his most singular and perplexing mechanical experiments, which he exhibited at the Tower before Charles I., several of his Court, some foreign ambassadors, and the lieutenant of that fortress. As he names Sir William Balfour (who held the latter appointment from 1630 to 1641) we can arrive at an approximate date. The mechanical surprise which he states he thus presented to gratify his royal master, was no other than a gigantic wheel, 14 feet in diameter, weighted with 40 weights of 50 lbs. each, equal to 2000 lbs., by means of which we are left to infer that the wheel maintained a rotatory motion, without assistance from any external aid whatever; that it was in fact, a realization of that long sought for curiosity—perpetual motion. As he wrote deliberately a statement of this circumstance fifteen years later, or more, which he afterwards printed, we are left without any grounds to suppose otherwise than that he deceived himself, or was deceived, from interested motives, by persons in his employment. The circumstance is scarcely worth notice except as a singular proof that such a hallucination could exist in the mind of the same genius that perfected the first practical steam-engine. We can only say that if the mystery could be cleared up, although it would be of little or no value to mathematics or mechanics, it would go far to elevate the scientific character of the Marquis, though he was not the only celebrity of his time infatuated with a thorough belief in the possibility of solving the paradox.