In pursuits and studies such as these, Lord Herbert spent about seven years at Raglan Castle. But his wife dying in 1635, the place became connected in his mind with too painful associations, and he shortly after left it to reside in London. On his arrival there, he proceeded to put to the practical test a plan of perpetual motion which he had long studied, and now thought he had brought to perfection. He accordingly had his self-moving wheel[7] set up in the Tower; but though it moved, its motion did not prove perpetual, and it shortly dropped out of sight, to be no more heard of.
After the lapse of four years, Lord Herbert again married, taking to wife the Lady Margaret, second daughter of the Earl of Thomond. In the year after his second marriage, the celebrated Long Parliament began its sittings. Questions of great public import were agitating the minds of thinking men, and the nation was gradually becoming divided into two hostile parties, soon to be arrayed against each other in deadly strife. A Royalist and a Roman Catholic like his father, Lord Herbert at once ranged himself on the side of the King. On the outbreak of the Civil War, we find both father and son actively employed in mustering forces, and preparing to hold the western counties against the Parliament. Raglan Castle was strongly garrisoned, and fortifications were thrown up around it, so as to render it secure against assault. The Earl, now Marquis of Worcester, was appointed Generalissimo of the Western Forces, while his son, Lord Herbert, was made General of South Wales. From this office he was shortly after called by the King, who, creating him Earl of Glamorgan, despatched him on a mission to Ireland, with the object of stirring up the loyalists of that kingdom, and inducing them to come to his help. This delicate office he is said to have performed with more zeal than discretion. Indeed, the studious habits of his early life must in a measure have unfitted him for the conduct of so important an affair; and the bungle he made of it was such that the King felt himself under the necessity of repudiating the acts which the Earl had done in his name.
It is unnecessary that we should follow the fortunes of the house of Raglan in the course of the civil war. Suffice it to say that the King’s cause was utterly lost; that Raglan Castle was besieged, taken, and dismantled; that the Marquis of Worcester, having advanced to the King at different times as much as 122,500l., had completely impoverished himself; and that when the Earl succeeded to his father’s title, and became second Marquis of Worcester, in 1646, he inherited an exhausted exchequer, a confiscated estate, and a ruined home. The services he had rendered to the King were remembered against him; and to escape the vengeance of his political enemies he took refuge in France. There he lived in poverty and in exile for a period of about five years. At length, drawn to England by the powerful attractions of wife and family, and probably also commissioned to perform a service for the exiled Charles II., the Marquis secretly visited London in 1655, where he was shortly after detected, apprehended, and imprisoned in the Tower. He sought and found solace, during his confinement, in study and contemplation, reverting to his early experiments in mechanics; and he occupied the long and weary hours in committing to paper descriptions of his many ingenious devices, which he afterwards published in his ‘Century of Inventions.’ The Marquis’s old and skilled mechanic, Caspar Kaltoff, continued faithful to him in his adversity, and was permitted to hold free communication with him; from which we infer that his imprisonment was not of a very rigid character.
After lying in the Tower for about two years, the Marquis was liberated on bail, in October, 1654, when he proceeded to take steps to erect his long-contemplated Water-commanding Engine. Even while a prisoner, we find him negotiating with the then owner of Vauxhall for its purchase, with a view to the establishment there of a school of skilled industry; thus anticipating by nearly two centuries the School of Mines and Manufactures at South Kensington. In the month preceding his enlargement we find Hartlib writing to the Hon. Robert Boyle,—“The Earl of Worcester is buying Fauxhall from Mr. Trenchard, to bestow the use of that house upon Caspar Calchoff and his son as long as they shall live, for he intends to make it a College of Artizans.”[8] His main difficulty, however, consisted in raising the necessary means for carrying his excellent project into effect. He was, indeed, so reduced in his circumstances as to be under the necessity of petitioning his political enemies for the bare means of living; and we find Cromwell, in the course of the year following his liberation from prison, issuing a warrant for the payment to him of three pounds a week “for his better maintenance.” The Marquis also tried the experiment of levying contributions from his friends; but they were, for the most part, as poor as himself. He next tried the wealthy men of the Parliamentary party, and succeeded in obtaining several advances of money from Colonel Copley, who took an active interest in the prosecution of various industrial undertakings.[9] The following letter from the Marquis to Copley shows the straits to which he was reduced:—
“Dear Friend,—I knowe not with what face to desire a curtesie from you, since I have not yet payed you the five powndes, and the mayne businesse soe long protracted, whereby my reality and kindnesse should with thankfullnesse appeare; for though the least I intende you is to make up the somme already promised to a thousand powndes yearly, or a share ammounting to four more, which, to nominate before the perfection of the woorke, were but an individuum vagum, and, therefore, I deferre it, and upon noe other score. Yet in this interim, my disappointments are soe great, as that I am forced to begge, if you could possible, eyther to helpe me with tenne powndes to this bearer, or to make use of the coache, and to goe to Mr. Clerke, and if he could this day help me to fifty powndes, then to paye your selfe the five powndes I owe you out of them. The Alderman has taken three days’ time to consider of it. Pardon the great trouble I give you, which I doubt not but in time to deserve, by really appearing
“Your most thankfull friend,
“Worcester.
“28th March, 1656.
“To my honoured friend, Collonel Christopher Coppley, these.”
The original of this letter is endorsed “My Lord of Worcester’s letter about my share in his engine,” from which it would appear that the Marquis induced his friends to advance him money on the promise of a certain proportion of shares in the undertaking. He also pressed his invention upon the notice of Government, representing that he was in a position to do his Highness the Protector “more service than any one subject of his three nations.” But neither the Protector nor his Ministers took any further notice of the Marquis or his project. It is probable that they regarded him as a bore, and his water-commanding engine as the mere dream of a projector.