CHAPTER VI 

 The Boyhood of the Eighth Duke 



IT was on February 12, 1824, that a son was born 

 to the Marquis of Worcester, the heir of the 

 sixth Duke of Beaufort. This child, who received 

 the names of Henry Charles Fitzroy, and bore the 

 title of Earl of Glamorgan, was for many years to 

 be a central figure in English Sport and Society. 

 The heir to the Dukedom of Beaufort, the his- 

 torical associations of which have already been 

 sketched, must indeed be a person of note in Eng- 

 land. 



We have seen how the Somerset family had 

 been connected with the earlier stages of the tran- 

 sition of the English nobility from a position of 

 personal power to one of political influence. The 

 eighth Duke of Beaufort was to see another great 

 change pass over English society, and to live 

 through that Victorian Era, that has witnessed a 

 transformation of our social life greater than at any 

 period in our history. In 1824 the Reform Bill 

 was still eight years away, and the political power 

 that had been for so long concentrating in the 



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