THE EIGHTH DUKE OF BEAUFORT 



the Somersets remained firm. They began, how- 

 ever, to withdraw to the country, where indeed their 

 true sphere of influence has been ever since. No 

 doubt at first the Lord Worcester of the day found 

 himself a Httle out of sympathy with the court life. 

 By creation he belonged to the new nobility, by 

 birth and heredity to the old. He still had some 

 fragments of the territorial power of the great 

 nobles of Plantagenet days, and he lived in Raglan 

 Castle, a stately building which had been a good 

 deal modernised to make it more habitable, yet was 

 still able, as we shall see, to stand a siege. From 

 this time till the Commonwealth, Raglan Castle be- 

 came the centre of the family life, and here the 

 stout old lord lived in patriarchal style and enjoyed 

 hunting and hawking. Here, too, his son thought 

 over problems of mechanics, and perhaps came near 

 to the invention of the steam engine. Came near to 

 it, I say, because Edward, Lord Herbert, known 

 later as the sixth Earl and second Marquis of his 

 race, came near to being many things, but just fell 

 short of everything. Almost a soldier, almost a 

 scholar, almost a statesman, almost a genius. Lord 

 Herbert never attained to more than a splendid 

 failure in each department. It is to this failure he 

 owes his place in history. Moreover, he very nearly 

 ruined his family. But during the early years of 

 the reign of Charles I. he was only the eldest son of 

 a great peer, a slight young man of retiring manners 

 and with a lisp or stutter that made him disinclined 



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