144 Mm& of tbe 1bunttna*jfiel& 



shadowed the steam-engine, and showed that he had 

 grasped the idea of the potentiality of steam as a motive 

 power. But the first marquis was a gallant soldier 

 as well as a great chemist and mechanician. He held 

 Ragland Castle in Monmouthshire, then the family seat 

 of the Somersets, with 800 men for nearly two years 

 against the Parliamentarians, and, even when forced by 

 Fairfax to surrender, was able to secure singularly 

 favourable terms of capitulation. The Castle was dis- 

 mantled and destroyed, and some idea of its size and 

 grandeur may be gathered from the fact that the lead 

 from the roofs alone fetched £6000. One way and 

 another their adherence to the king's cause cost the 

 Somersets upwards of ;^ 100,000, which may be reckoned 

 as equivalent to nearly half-a-million in our present 

 currency. Ragland Castle was never rebuilt, and thence- 

 forward the home of the Somersets was at Badminton, the 

 manor of which, with its noble park, had been purchased 

 by Thomas, Viscount Somerset of Cashel, from Nicholas 

 Boteler, the last representative of one of the oldest 

 families in England. 



The second Marquis of Worcester was created Duke 

 of Beaufort in consideration, t'nter alia, so runs the 

 patent, ' of his noble descent from King Edward the 

 Third through John de Beaufort, eldest son of John of 

 Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, by Catherine Swinford his 

 third wife.' The first duke celebrated his accession to 

 ducal honours by building the present Badminton House, 

 one of the finest mansions in Great Britain. Its grand 

 Palladian colonnade gives it an imposing external 

 appearance, but the splendour of its internal decorations 

 is the great glory of the ancestral seat of the Dukes of 

 Beaufort. Grinling Gibbons, the Great Master Carver to 



