RISE OF THE SOMERSETS 



he was the last holder. Full of years, riches and 

 honour, the Earl passed away in 1526, and was laid 

 beside his first wife in the Beaufort Chapel at 

 Windsor. 



He had begun life with little but his sword and 

 his name, and he closed it as one of the greatest of 

 the new nobility that had sprung up under the 

 Tudor dynasty to be the supports and defenders of 

 the crown. The gradual concentration of power 

 in the crown made the career of Lord Worcester's 

 immediate successors more that of courtiers than of 

 soldiers and statesmen. Their acknowledged re- 

 lationship to the royal family drew them to the 

 court. There only was a career possible to a man 

 like Henry, the second Earl of Worcester. In his 

 youth the second Earl had been, as we have seen, 

 a redoubtable knight in the tournaments of the day, 

 tilting in splendid armour at the Field of the Cloth 

 of Gold. Henry, who on his father being created 

 Earl of W'orcester, in 15 14, became known as Baron 

 Herbert, sat in the trial of the Duke of Buckingham 

 in 1 52 1. Five years later he succeeded to the earl- 

 dom. He was in attendance as carver at the 

 coronation of Anne Boleyn, and his wife, with the 

 Countess of Oxford, attended on the queen at the 

 banquet which followed that ceremony. Neither he 

 nor the queen could have foreseen that he was to 

 sit later as a judge in her trial in May, 1536. 



It was perhaps as a reward for the latter service 

 that he received from the king a grant of the lands 



15 



