503 



SOMERSET, DUKE OF. 



SOMNER, WILLIAM. 



Hardwicke, was the author of the Act passed in 1705, for the security 

 of the Protestant Succession. [QEOEOK I.] 



On the return of his party to power in 1708, Somers was made 

 president of the council; and he held that office till the recovery of 

 the cabinet by Harley and the Tories iu 1710. He succeeded in 

 making himself very acceptable to Queen Anne, notwithstanding her 

 original prejudice against him. It is affirmed by Lord Dartmouth 

 that he impressed her with a deep and grateful sense of his fidelity 

 and integrity, by his acquainting her with and putting her on her 

 guard against a scheme entertained by the Duke of Marlborough to 

 get himself made captain-general, or commander of the forces, for 

 life, which, without having so much as mentioned it to her majesty, 

 his grace tried in 1709 to get proposed in the House of Commons, 

 and expected the Whigs should all come into, in return for the great 

 services he had lately done them. The following year, on occasion of 

 the proposals for peace made by . the French at Gertruydenberg, 

 Somers strongly recommended the continuance of the war. He had 

 of course gone along, apparently, with his colleagues in the prosecu- 

 tion of Sacheverell, in 1709; but Swift, in his 'History of the Four 

 Last Years of Queen Anne,' tells us that he had heard from Lord 

 Soincrs himself that he was against engaging in that foolish business, 

 as foreseeing that it was likely to end in the ruin of the Whig party. 



There is a curious note to Burnet's ' History of his own Time,' by 

 Mr. Speaker Onslow, in which he relates some negociations that were 

 carried on with Harley by Somers, Halifax, and Cowper, a short time 

 before the change of ministers in 1710, on the basis of an overture 

 made by Harley for keeping them in place, if they would consent to 

 the substitution of himself and some of his friends for the lord 

 treasurer (Godolphin) and his dependants. Onslow says that he had 

 his information from Sir Joseph Jekyl, " who," he adds, " had it very 

 likely, and I think he said so too, from the Lord Somers, to whom he 

 was brother-in-law." The negociatiou was broken off in consequence 

 of the opposition of Lord Wharton, who expressed his detestation of 

 having anything to do with Harley. 



Somers continued to take part occasionally in the debates of the 

 House of Lords after his second dismissal from office ; but the infirm 

 state of his health is said by this time to have somewhat affected his 

 intellect. In 1713 we find him joining in support of the factious 

 motion brought forward by a section of the opposition, for leave to 

 bring in a bill .to dissolve the Union. " I had it," writes Onslow, 

 "from good authority (the late Sir Robert Monroe, then of the House 

 of Commons), that at a meeting upon it at my lord Somers's house, 

 where Monroe was, nobody pressed this motion more than that lord!" 

 He resumed his place at the council-board after the accession of 

 George I. ; but his faculties were now almost gone. It is related 

 however that he took an interest in the progress of the Septennial 

 Bill, which he declared " he thought would be the greatest support 

 possible to the liberty of the country." At last a stroke of apoplexy 

 occasioned his death, on the 26th of April 1716. 



Lord Sorners was never married, though it is stated by the author 

 of the ' Memoirs of his Life,' that when he was solicitor-general he 

 paid his addresses to a daughter of Sir John Bawdon, a London alder- 

 man, and that he went so far in the matter as to deliver in a rental of 

 his estate, after several meetings with the lady's friends ; " but," con- 

 cludes the story, " the treaty broke off on account of a difference 

 about the marriage-portion and settlement, to the great regret of the 

 lady, when she found him made lord keeper of the great seal in two 

 years' time." His estates descended to the family of his sister, who 

 was married to Charles Cocks, Esq., M.P., whose grandson was created 

 Baron Somers in 1784. 



The character of Lord Somers has been elaborately drawn by 

 Addisou in one of the numbers of the ' Freeholder ' (published 

 May 14th, 1714), but with considerable wordiness, and something 

 perhaps of the air of insincerity which commonly attaches to a formal 

 panegyric. He had been an early and zealous patron of Addison, who 

 had obtained his notice by inscribing to him his early poem ,on the 

 campaigns of King William, and who afterwards dedicated to him his 

 ' Travels in Italy ' and the first volume of the ' Spectator.' There is 

 much more force in the more shaded picture of him which Swift has 

 given in his 'History of the Four Last Years of Queen Anne;' nor 

 perhaps, taken with the proper allowance, does it convey a less correct 

 notion of the man. 



The collection commonly called the ' Somers Tracts,' which has 

 been twice printed, first in 16 vols. 4to, 1748, secondly, in 13 vols. 4to, 

 1809-15, under the superintendence of the late Sir Walter Scott, con- 

 sists of scarce pamphlets, selected, as the title intimates, principally 

 from the library of Lord Somers. A valuable collection of original 

 letters and other papers left by his lordship was unfortunately con- 

 sumed in a fire which happened in the chambers of the Honourable 

 Charles Yorke, then solicitor-general, in Lincoln's Inn Square, on the 

 moruing of Saturday, the 29th of January 1752. Mr. Yorke's father, 

 the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, married Lord Somers's niece, Miss 

 Margaret Cocks. 



SOMERSET, EDWARD SEYMOUR, DUKE OF. [EDWARD VI.] 



SOMERSET, EARL OF. [JAMES I., vol. iii., col. 588.] 

 *SOMERVILLE, MRS. MARY, was born about 1790 in Scotland, 

 and her early years were passed at Musselburgh, a small sea-port near 

 the city of Edinburgh. She is said to have been first married to an 



BIOO. DIV. VOL. V. 



officer of the British navy, who instructed her in the mathematical and 

 physical sciences. She became afterwards the wife of Dr. Somerville, 

 and attracted the attention of the philosophical world by some experi- 

 ments on the magnetic influence of the violet rays of the solar 

 spectrum. These experiments were conducted in a simple manner, 

 without costly apparatus, and her statement of the results was free, 

 unembarrassed, and unassuming. Mrs. Somerville's next appearance 

 before the scientiGc public was at the instance of Lord Brougham, 

 who, knowing her mathematical and astronomical qualifications, had 

 engaged her to furnish for publication by the Society for the Diffusion 

 of Useful Knowledge a popular account of the ' Mecanique Cdleste ' of 

 Laplace. The work however outgrew its first destination, and was 

 published in an independent form, under the title of the ' Mechanism, 

 of the Heavens,' London, 8vo, 1832. In the body of the work, the 

 demonstrations of Laplace are in many cases given without alteration ; 

 in others they have been in some degree changed ; and in a few 

 instances they have been entirely superseded by others drawn from 

 different sources. In a preliminary dissertation extending to seventy 

 pages Mrs. Somerville has collected and detailed most of the striking 

 facts which theory and observation have made known concerning the 

 constitution of the universe. 



This preliminary dissertation to the ' Mechanism of the Heavens ' 

 became the nucleus of her next work, 'On the Connexion of the 

 Physical Sciences,' 12mo, 1834, which is dedicated by permission to 

 the Queen. Portions of the original dissertation are introduced into 

 the present work, but the whole has been recast, and additional 

 subjects have been 'ntroduced, such as meteorology, electricity, magne- 

 tism, and others. She gives an account of the great law of gravitation, 

 and treats of the mutual actions of the primary and secondary planets, 

 of the figure of the earth, of the oceans and their tides. She after- 

 wards treats of acoustics as connected with the constitution of the 

 atmosphere, of light and colours, of heat, of electricity, and of 

 comets. All these subjects are explained with great clearness and 

 precision. In 1835 Mrs. Somerville was elected an honorary member 

 of the Royal Astronomical Society. 



Mrs. Somerville's next and last work, dedicated to Sir John Herschel, 

 is entitled 'Physical Geography,' 2 vols. 12mo, 1848. She treats first 

 of the under-surface of the earth, or geology, and then successively of 

 the land-surface, of the great oceans and seas, of the river-systems, of 

 the atmosphere, and lastly of the distribution of organic existence 

 over the globe. The style is always simple and perspicuous, is often 

 vigorous and elegant, and occasionally rises to a strain of eloquence 

 suitable to the grandeur of the scenes which it has to describe. 



Mrs. Somerville enjoys a pension of 300Z. a year from the civil list 

 fund, as a reward for her valuable literary services. 



SOMERVILLE, WILLIAM, was born in 1692 at Edstone, in War- 

 wickshire, which had been the residence of his ancestors from the 

 time of Edward I. He studied at Winchester School, and at New 

 College, Oxford. Having completed his education he resided during 

 the rest of his life in the family mansion, partly occupied with the 

 duties of a justice of peace, partly with the active pleasures of the 

 sportsman, and partly with the cultivation of his poetical talents. His 

 income, derived from the estate which he inherited from his father, 

 was 1500. a year, out of which his mother had a jointure of 6001. a 

 year. Hospitable, convivial, and careless of economy, he became 

 involved in debt, and in the latter part of his life, according to the 

 account of his friend Shenstone the poet, " drank himself into pains 

 of the body in order to get rid of the pains of the mind." He died 

 July 19, 1742, and was buried at Wotton, near Henley -in- Ard en, 

 Warwickshire. 



Soinerville's ' Chase ' is still a favourite with those who combine a 

 taste for poetry with an attachment to the sports of the field, and has 

 been frequently reprinted. It is written in tolerably harmonious 

 blank verse ; and as the poet was practically master of his subject, 

 his descriptions are always accurate and frequently vivid, and he has 

 given variety to them by comparing the rural sports of other countries 

 with those of his own. Somerville has written another rural poem, 

 called ' Field Sports,' which describes the amusement of hawking ; 

 and ' Hobbinol, or Rural Games,' a mock heroic. He has also written 

 some Fables, which are mostly dull and uninteresting ; some rather 

 coarse Tales ; and a few lyrical pieces, which display no great poetical 

 power, but contain many beautiful lines. 



SOMMERARD, A. DU. [D0 SOMMERAED, A.] 



SOMNER, WILLIAM, was born at Canterbury, according to the 

 account given by his wife and son, March 30th, 1606; b,ut according 

 to the register of the parish of St. Margaret's, he was baptised there 

 on November 5th, 1598. His father was registrar of the court of 

 Canterbury under Sir Nathaniel Brent, who was then commissary. 

 He was sent to the free-school of that city, where he acquired a com- 

 petent knowledge of Latin. He was next placed as clerk to his father 

 in the ecclesiastical courts of the diocese, and afterwards preferred to 

 an office in the courts by Archbishop Laud. His natural bent was to 

 the study of antiquities, in which he was encouraged by Dr. Merio 

 Casaubon, one of the prebendaries. In 1640 he published ' The Anti- 

 quities of Canterbury,' 4to, a work which gained him, considerable 

 reputation, and which was afterwards reprinted and enlarged by 

 Nicholas Batteley, fol., London, 1703. Somner's next production was 

 an Appendix to the first part (all that was published) of Casaubon's 



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