“It is said,” continues our authority in another place, “that the Marquess, while confined in the Tower of London, was preparing some food in his apartment, (a singularly good result from a marquess having been obliged to be his own cook,) and the cover of the vessel having been closely fitted, was, by the expansion of the steam, suddenly forced off and driven up the chimney. This circumstance attracting his attention, led him to a train of thought, which terminated in the completion of his ‘water-commanding engine.’”
Thus, we think, posterity has something more to thank the noble owner of Raglan for, than deeds of arms, or the defence of castles. His great castle, however, was ere this time in ruins, and furnishing another instance of the folly with which the conquerors at that period destroyed the noble buildings which had belonged to their enemies the Royalists; as if it had not been enough, and more wise and provident, to have kept them in their own possession, and converted them to republican uses.
The Marquess survived the publication of his “Century” only about two years. He died in retirement, near London, on the 3d of April, 1667, and was buried in the vault of Raglan Church, on the 19th of the same month, near his grandfather, Edward, Earl of Worcester.[289]
After the Restoration, as already noticed, a committee was appointed by the House of Lords,[290] to take the patent above quoted into serious consideration. The consequence was, that in a very few days thereafter it reported that the Marquess was willing, without further question, to deliver it up to his Majesty; and accordingly, on the third of September following, the said patent, “granted,” as it was alleged, “in prejudice to the Peers,” was formally surrendered to the Sovereign, as the only fountain of national honours.
Henry, only son of the second Marquess, succeeded him in all those high titles and appointments, by which the King endeavoured to make him amends for the vast sacrifices which his family had incurred by a long course of unflinching and untarnished loyalty. And to crown the whole, he was installed K.G., and finally advanced to the highest rank of the peerage. Having been “eminently serviceable to the King”—as expressed in the patent—“since his most happy restoration to the throne of these realms; in consideration thereof, and of his most noble descent from King Edward the Third, by John de Beaufort, eldest son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, by Catherine Swinford, his third wife,” the Marquess of Worcester was created, in December, 1682, Duke of Beaufort, with remainder to the heirs male of his body.
At the funeral of Charles the Second, his Grace was one of the supporters to George, Prince of Denmark, chief mourner. By James the Second he was made Lord President of Wales, and Lord Lieutenant of twelve different counties in the Principality; and at the Coronation, in April following, he had the distinguished honour of carrying the Queen’s crown. He was afterwards made Colonel of the 11th Regiment of foot, then first raised. He next exerted himself against the Duke of Monmouth; and endeavoured, though ineffectually, to secure Bristol against the adherents of the Prince of Orange. Upon that Prince’s elevation to the British throne, his Grace refused to take the oaths, and abjuring public life, lived in retirement until his death, which took place in 1699, in the seventieth year of his age.
Charles, the second but eldest surviving son of the first Duke, is mentioned in the family history as a nobleman of great parts and learning. He died in the lifetime of his father, in consequence of an accident, in the thirty-eighth year of his age. His horses, we are told, taking fright, and running down a steep hill, the danger became imminent; when, to avoid the casualty which threatened him, he unhappily leaped out, broke his thigh-bone, and only survived the accident three days.
Henry, his eldest son, succeeded his grandfather as second Duke of Beaufort. On Queen Anne’s visiting the University of Oxford in 1702, and going thence in her progress to Bath, the Duke met her Majesty near Cirencester, on the twenty-ninth of August; and, attended by great numbers of the gentlemen, clergy, and freeholders of the county, conducted her with great pomp to his seat at Badminton, where she was received with regal splendour. This act of loyal hospitality—so becoming in a descendant of Henry the first Marquess of Worcester—was most graciously acknowledged by the Queen and her royal consort Prince George of Denmark.
Three years after this event, the Duke took his seat in the House of Lords; but did not appear at court until after the change of ministers in 1710, when he frankly told her Majesty that he could “then, and only then, call her Queen of England.”