xii PREFACE. 



he had designed to delineate. How infinitely superior 

 to this rough draught would have been the sketch, had 

 Macaulay possessed proper documentary evidence. A 

 more striking or satisfactory instance than is here 

 adduced could not be presented for showing the paucity 

 of information hitherto existing in a collected form ; 

 and those readers who might otherwise have doubted 

 the fact, will readily gather from what is here brought 

 forward, that the story of this singular man s life has 

 hitherto remained untold. 



The life of the Marquis of Worcester affords a tissue 

 of the most violent contrasts, romantic in many inci 

 dents, exceeding any that have ever been experienced 

 by any other descendant of our ancient nobility. He was 

 a man of rigid honour and probity, remarkable too for 

 his modesty, virtue, and genius, in an age distinguished 

 for few excellencies, and notorious for many vices. He 

 was the favourite of his Sovereign, although in but 

 little favour at Court, and the very esteem which 

 raises most men was his certain ruin 5 obliged to flee 

 his country, he returned only to be imprisoned ; and on 

 his release, was allowed 156 per annum out of his 

 own princely but confiscated estates ! As the subject 

 of Charles the Second, he received back his demolished 

 castle, without the means to re-establish himself; and, 

 steeped in debt, he sought royal patronage in vain, 

 although his genius was perhaps of greater value to 

 the state, than all the revenues of the Crown ! Neglected 

 by contemporaries, his memory has been preserved 

 rather traditionally than by any literary effort (beyond 

 fitful glimpses of doubtful praise), to raise a monu 

 ment to the indisputable inventor of the Steam Engine 

 that greatest source of our country s commercial and 

 manufacturing greatness ; and universal, moral and in 

 tellectual progress. Lord Macaulay has tersely and justly 



