M-8 If^inos of tbe 1[?untmg«3Ficl^ 



if necessary, pull down walls and fences, for His Grace 

 was not one to be tamely content with mere road work, 

 he was bent on being as well up with hounds as wheels 

 could take him. So to the last he showed the in- 

 domitable spirit of his race. 



At his death on the 17th of November 1853, he was 

 succeeded by his son, Charles Henry Fitzroy Somerset, 

 who now, as eighth Duke of Beaufort, is as popular in the 

 world of society and sport as his father before him. I 

 think there is no other noble family in England, unless 

 it be the Spencers, in which hereditary traits have been 

 so faithfully and continuously transmitted as among the 

 Somersets. For 200 years the same tastes, the same 

 peculiarities, the same motives in a more or less 

 pronounced form, have characterised one duke after 

 another. Even in their physical features may be traced 

 a continuous resemblance, and it is hardly too much to 

 suppose that the Somersets of the nineteenth century 

 give us a very fair idea of the Plantagenets of the 

 fourteenth. 



Charles Henry Fitzroy Somerset, the eighth and 

 present duke, is even more versatile than his father. 

 His experiences have been varied indeed. A dashing 

 cavalry officer, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington 

 and Viscount Harding, Member of Parliament for East 

 Gloucestershire, High Steward of Bristol, Master of the 

 Horse, Privy Councillor, Master of the Badminton Hounds, 

 Memberof the Jockey Club, PresidentoftheFour-in-Hand 

 and Coaching Clubs, a generous patron of the Drama, a 

 man about town of the first water — there is no fashion- 

 able circle of political, aristocratic, sporting or Bohemian 

 society in which the present Duke of Beaufort has not 

 been a conspicuous and popular figure. But it is as the 



