BIRTH, HOME, EDUCATION, EARLY CAREER, TIMES, AND FIRST MARRIAGE
OF EDWARD SOMERSET, LORD HERBERT.
As already related, Henry,[A] fifth Earl of Worcester, married in
June, 1600, while yet attached to the Court of Queen Elizabeth, and,
therefore, most likely he was resident at Worcester House, in the
Strand, a building of some importance from its magnitude and position,
as well as from the princely character of the noble possessor of the
property.
There, it is reasonable to conclude, was born Edward Somerset early in
1601, the son and heir whose eventful history will hereafter mainly
occupy our attention, first as Lord Herbert, afterwards as the Earl of
Glamorgan, and lastly, on succeeding to his father’s titles, as Earl
and Marquis of Worcester.
The birth of this Lord Herbert has never before been attempted to be
ascertained, wherefore the present assumed date requires confirmation.
On the 14th of July, 1609, when he would thus probably be only eight
years of age, we find him associated with his grandfather and father in
a lease of lands in the manor of Wondy, Monmouth, and of the fishing,
or river of Usk and Carlion, for their lives.[B]
His preceptor at Raglan Castle was Mr. Adams; but he does not appear,
like his father, to have been at any college in England; as, however,
he travelled much on the Continent at an early period of his life, it
is possible he also finished his education at some foreign university.
In a communication of singular interest, written late in life,
hereafter given in full, he specially observes:--“Amongst Almighty
God’s infinite mercies to me in this world, I account it one of the
greatest that his divine goodness vouchsafed me parents as well careful
as able to give me virtuous education, and extraordinary breeding at
home and abroad, in Germany, France, and Italy, allowing me abundantly
in those parts.” This summary is sufficiently explicit as regards the
circuit of his travels, and the easy, agreeable circumstances under
which it was performed, but still leaves it open to doubt whether he
had completed his educational course before entering on his continental
tour. Wood expressly states, in reference to Lord Herbert’s father,
that after he had been two or three years at college he was sent to
travel in France, Italy, &c., where he presumes he changed his religion
for that of Rome.[109]
During the reign of James I., and while his grandfather was Keeper of
the Privy Seal, no mention occurs of Lord Herbert enjoying any favour
at Court, his courtier life commencing only in that of Charles I.,
according to allusions made in the document before noticed. On the
accession of the latter monarch to the throne, Lord Herbert might be 24
years of age. In alluding to his “education and breeding,” coupled with
his travels, he adds: “And since most plentifully at my master of most
happy memory, the late King’s Court;” making it almost conclusive that
his education was considered as completed shortly prior to the King’s
decease, in 1625.
In 1627 his grandfather was at Worcester House, whence he wrote to the
Earl of Huntingdon on the 11th of June, informing him of his illness
and inability to leave his bedchamber.[C]
The first year of the reign of Charles I. was an auspicious one,
therefore, for the young Lord Herbert. His father, a stalwart, hale
man, was in the prime of life, only 48 years of age, lord of one of
the finest castles in the kingdom, whether considered for the beauty,
strength and importance of its structure and its commanding situation,
or the extent of its parks, pastures, plantations, and forests; it
was a luxurious place well stored with paintings, furniture, and
plate, while it was surrounded with every embellishment of fountains,
fishponds, statuary, and gardens that art or wealth could command. Lord
Herbert himself was rich in acquired knowledge, and in whatever way his
natural genius then displayed itself, such a mind as he possessed must
have afforded many evidences of latent talent. One important part of a
young nobleman’s education in Elizabeth’s time, and later, was that of
horsemanship, particularly in the tilt-yard, a kind of adjunct to noble
residences, supposed by many to have existed even at Raglan Castle, but
such an opinion is not even authorised by any tradition. Some interest
he might take in tournaments, but we easily suspect without aiming at,
or succeeding in that skill in manœuvres so requisite in the fierce
and fiery jousts appertaining to such knightly contests, equipped in
heavy armour, wielding a ponderous lance, and mimicking all the maddest
encounters of the fellest enemies. We doubt if his talent lay that
way. His grandfather’s horsemanship has been greatly extolled by all
writers, in alluding to his character. In his youth (it is said) he
was remarkable for his athletic acquirements, distinguishing himself
by the manly exercises of riding and tilting, in which he was perhaps
superior to any of his contemporaries. But we have no reason to extol
the grandson for like success in these chivalric exercises.
We conceive he was otherwise disqualified, that he was too light of
weight and too short in stature. He appears to have been of slender
figure, and rather under than above the middle standard in height. In
another point, indirectly perhaps affecting this same matter, he did
not possess that easy, boisterous speech which armed assailants may
often be called on to assume, to strike terror into a foe, by throwing
him off his guard. He himself acknowledges, later in life, to this
vocal defect, when, in writing to Charles II. he admits that he takes
up the pen, as he says,--“To ease your Majesty of a trouble incident
to the prolixity of speech, and a _natural defect of utterance_ which
I accuse myself of.” “The prolixity of speech” any one may imagine,
both from the letter in which this passage occurs, as well as in the
noble lord’s general correspondence throughout his life; it seems to be
a style in which the close of each sentence, or its matter, suggests
the next, to be followed again in like manner, until the main subject
becomes so overlaid as to be lost in needless verbose amplification.
But he could and did write tersely enough on occasion. No man could
then better display the admirable art of compressing large meaning
into small compass. If eloquence in speaking “troubled” him, eloquent
writing assuredly cost him, it would appear, vastly more trouble in
the labour of the pen. We suspect that concentration of thought was
natural to him, but its elaboration to produce that roundness of
period assumed necessary for the style of a courtly gentleman, confused
and perplexed him. We imagine the prosy writer, being conversationally
sententious; perhaps painfully so to the ears of fashionable society,
delighting as it does in the trivialties of such conversation as that
which would principally characterise the Court of those days; rendered
perhaps only the more irksome by his continuance in its fashionable
frivolities for three or more years.
A very fair specimen of the mechanical knowledge of the period, when
Lord Herbert was finishing his education, is afforded in the work of
Henry Peacham, published in 1627, entitled “The Compleat Gentleman.”
In his ninth chapter, treating of Geometry, he says: “Out of Egypt,
Thales brought it into Greece, where it received that perfection we
see it now hath. For by means hereof are found out the forms and
draughts of all figures, greatness of all bodies, all manner of
measures and weights, the cunning working of all tools; with all
artificial instruments whatsoever. All engines of war, for many
whereof (being antiquated) we have no proper names; as, Exosters,
Sambukes, Catapultes, Testudos, Scorpions, &c. Petardes, Grenades,
great Ordinance of all sorts.
“By the benefit, likewise, of Geometry, we have our goodly ships,
gallies, bridges, mills, chariots and coaches, (which were invented
in Hungary, and there called Cotzki), some with two wheels, some with
more; pullies and cranes of all sorts. She (Geometry) also with her
ingenious hand rears all curious roofs and arches, stately theatres,
the columns simple and compounded, pendant galleries, stately windows,
turrets, &c. And first brought to light our clocks and curious
watches (unknown unto the ancients); lastly, _our kitchen jacks,
even the wheel-barrow_. Besides whatsoever hath artificial motion,
either by air, water, wind, sinews or cords, as all manner of musical
instruments, water works and the like.
“Yea, moreover, such is the infinite subtilty, and immense depth of
this admirable art, that it dares contend even with nature’s self, in
infusing life, as it were, into the senseless bodies of wood, stone,
or metal. Witness the wooden dove of Archytas, so famous not only by
Agellius, but many other authors beyond exception; which by reason of
weights equally poised within the body, and a certain proportion of air
(as the spirit of life enclosed), flew cheerfully forth, as if it had
been a living dove.”
This Cambridge Master of Arts appears much delighted with these and
certain minute automata, occupying two pages in describing Scaliger’s
ship, to swim and steer itself by means of the pith of rushes, bladder,
and little strings of sinews; a wooden eagle “which mounted up into the
air, and flew before the Emperor to the gates of Nuremberg;” an iron
fly that flew about a table; ants and other insects made of ivory, so
small that the “joints of their legs could not be discerned;” a four
wheeled coach, which a fly could “cover with her wings;” a ship with
all its sails, “which a little bee could overspread;” and, “of later
times, Hadrian Junius, tells us that he saw with great delight and
admiration, at Mechlin, in Brabant, a cherry-stone cut in the form of
a basket, wherein were fifteen pair of dice distinct, each with their
spots and number, very easily of a good eye to be discerned;” how “the
Ilias of Homer written, was enclosed within a nut;” while, to conclude,
Scaliger, relates “of a flea he saw with a long chain of gold about its
neck.” The account of these wonders of art, winds up with descriptions
of brazen, glass, and silver models, or planetariums illustrating the
situations and motions of the heavenly bodies.
From this serious discourse, by a grave scholar, and contemporary,
relating to the labours of the first mathematicians of a bygone as
well as of the existing age, we may form a valuable conception of
the state of science, in its popular character, when Edward, Lord
Herbert, entered upon his own course of practical philosophical
pursuits, affording the ground work of his Century of Inventions,
the accumulated digest of whatever he had effected during the early,
middle, and later years of his life. Viewed from any other point than
the period in which he lived, the means of information around him, and
the comparatively limited extent of scientific knowledge, the modern
reader would form a serious misconception of his singular abilities,
his versatile mechanical talent and the fecundity of his inventive
ingenuity. There can be little or no doubt but that he was well versed
in the mathematical knowledge of his times, and that it principally
contributed in aiding him to obtain those mechanical results, to which
we consequently find him restricting his attention.
Lord Bacon had died but the year before the publication of Peacham’s
work. Alchemy still ruled and had its adepts and votaries; and Ashmole
made a large collection of alchemical writings, for Chemistry was but
just faintly emerging from the mysticisms of its precursor, Alchemy.
In the year 1628 Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, being then about 27
years of age, married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Dormer,
eldest son of Robert Lord Dormer of Weng, and sister to Robert Earl
of Carnarvon.[5] She became in 1629 the mother of Henry[D] Somerset
(afterwards created first Duke of Beaufort); and had besides two
daughters, Anne, who married Henry Frederick, third Earl of Arundel of
the Howards; and Elizabeth, who married William Herbert, first Marquis
of Powis.
[Illustration: Portrait of Elizabeth Lady Herbert, first wife of
Edward Lord Herbert, afterwards Marquis of Worcester. From a painting
by Vandyke]
Engraved by J. Cochran.
ELIZABETH, LADY HERBERT,
Died 31st. May, 1635.
FIRST WIFE OF EDWARD SOMERSET, LORD HERBERT.
AFTERWARDS SECOND MARQUIS OF WORCESTER.
_Drawn by Henry Dircks, C.E. from the Original of Vandyke in
the Collection of His Grace the Duke of Beaufort._
Published by B. Quaritch, Piccadilly, London, 1864.
No contemporary or other hand has recorded any details of Lord
Herbert’s marriage, or even any particulars of his early life; in the
absence of decisive information, we can only surmise from stray facts
the possibility of his having withdrawn from the Court, taken up his
abode at Raglan Castle, and there occupied himself in those scientific
studies and pursuits which were his special delight at that early
period, and which were indeed the solace even of his declining years.
Judging from a statement that occurs in his writings,[E] it is most
likely that in 1628, soon after his marriage, he engaged the services
of “the unparalleled workman both for trust and skill, CASPAR
KALTOFF,” of whom we shall have occasion to speak more at length
hereafter, and who, he says, was “as in a school under me employed;”[F]
by which we understand that Kaltoff had the practical management of
those mechanical and other inventions which, then commenced, became the
principal study and employment of his Lordship’s leisure during the
remainder of his life. He must have set up a complete laboratory or
workshop in which to operate on the many varied ingenious contrivances
and experiments, of only part of which he has left us a most
interesting catalogue raisonné.
The early genius of Lord Herbert would appear to have exhibited itself
in an attachment to mathematical studies, and a singular predilection,
in a young nobleman, for mechanical pursuits. He has himself mentioned
two instances which we consider may fairly be referred to his earliest
continental tour, accompanied by his tutor. Speaking of a certain
contrivance for a fountain, he explicitly declares:--“This I confess, I
have seen and learned of the great mathematician Claudius his studies
at Rome, he having made a present thereof unto a Cardinal.” And when,
alluding to a peculiar kind of lever, he pointedly remarks: “This I
saw in the arsenal at Venice;”[G] thus showing how early his mind was
impressed with those studies which became the distinguishing feature
of his writings; and all the more surprising in him, considering
his birth, his times, and the originality and fruitfulness of his
inventive talent, which might have found ample scope in some branch of
literature, in agriculture, or in military works.
His employment of a foreign mechanic was quite in accordance with
the spirit of the age. National and private undertakings, as well as
manufacturing and other matters requiring engineering skill, were
ordinarily superintended by eminent Italian, Dutch, German, French,
Swiss, or other continental engineers.
During a period of seven years, from the time of his marriage,
his life appears to have borne an entirely studious and domestic
character, spent, most likely, principally at Raglan. To the ample
leisure and quiet thus afforded him we may attribute all his lesser
inventions, such as the numerous schemes for effecting and conveying
secret correspondence, which in early and troubled times were esteemed
as highly useful; some of his automata, amusive toys, drawing and
other instruments and mechanical devices. He appears to have taken
considerable interest in multiplying these comparatively minor
inventions almost to exhaustion, as it were, of the several subjects
to which they apply. So fertile, indeed, was this inventive faculty in
him, that he himself has stated: “The more that you shall be pleased to
make use of my inventions, the more inventive shall you ever find me,
one invention begetting still another.”[H]
Among his larger works we must rank his water-raising engines, in which
his earliest efforts are exhibited in the water-works he erected in
connection with the Citadel or Keep of Raglan Castle; which, as will
be more minutely explained in a future commentary, belongs to this
period. It probably depended for its operation on the influence of heat
from burning fuel acting on a suitably constructed boiler containing
water, and so arranged as to be able to apply the expansive force of
steam to the driving of water through vertical pipes to a considerable
elevation, which in this instance is supposed to have been limited to
a large cistern on the summit of the Citadel or Donjon, known as the
Tower of Gwent. This early work may, in fact, have been the occasion
of calling in the aid of Caspar Kaltoff; and once thus employed, his
after retention by such a master is readily conceivable. But master,
and man, and works have all disappeared, and no printed, written,
or drawn record or model remains of the waterworks there set up, to
enable us to point distinctly to precise particulars of arrangement.
All that the inquisitive and ingenious investigator can find to reward
his most prying curiosity, are certain strange mysterious grooves
in the external wall of the Citadel, on one side facing the moat
and the castle, which point like a hieroglyphic inscription to the
precise place where once stood in active operation the first practical
application in a primitive form of a means of employing steam as a
useful mechanical agent.
[Illustration: Water-works side of the Citadel, Raglan Castle]
The annexed engraving represents a view of that side of the Citadel
which looks across the moat towards the castle; that is, across the
place where a bridge once stood, and opposite the Fountain Court.
Commencing from below we observe a gothic doorway, which was the
entrance to the draw and the permanent bridges. Over the arched
interior of this entrance is a chamber or cell, measuring about seven
feet by five feet, and better than six feet high in the centre. On the
outside front of the cell are seen indications of two square places;
and above them, one to each, two upright channels or grooves, each
one foot wide and the same in depth. Adjoining is another groove but
terminating at bottom in two lesser grooves of four inches and a half
in width, connected a little way up with the large groove. This second
portion has a distinct cell behind it, less in dimensions than the
first. From the summit of the three large vertical channels to the
ground measures forty-six feet.
Now it would have been quite possible to work a small steam boiler in
each cell, and the pipes from those boilers might have been enclosed
in the grooves described, entering inwards at top to discharge their
contents into a cistern on the Citadel roof. And the boilers might have
been conveniently supplied with water from the moat either by hand
pumps, or by forming a vacuum for that purpose. It is here, however,
unnecessary to enter upon mechanical details, as the subject will
appear at large when describing his matured Invention.
That inimitable portrait painter Vandyck, who was born 1598–9, studied
under Rubens, and was an especial favourite with Charles the First, has
undoubtedly left us a faithful portraiture of the features of both his
Lordship and of Elizabeth his first wife; the former dating probably
between 1621 and 1626, the latter between 1628 and 1635.
The portrait of Lady Herbert, three-quarter size, is to be seen in the
dining-room at Badminton House. It displays an intellectual countenance
of a serious, dignified and most pleasing cast; her dark auburn hair
is combed close from the forehead backwards, but so as still to leave
a fringe of small curls in front; her hair braided and knotted behind
is entwined with a string of pearls, while a portion of her tresses
from behind falls in abundant ringlets about her neck and shoulders.
She wears a large plain pearl necklace; with single pearl-drops as
ear-rings. Her dress is low-bodied, of white satin, with the usual long
tight stomacher, full short sleeves and large white vandyked frills
or cuffs; on her arms, near each elbow, are single strings of pearls,
like bracelets. Over her shoulders is thrown a light narrow fur tippet
with long ends terminating backwards in short tails. The artist has
represented her looking slightly aside as she might appear crossing her
drawing-room, in the highly graceful and becoming style which Vandyck
always so happily selected for the subjects of his magic pencil.
This may have been the period to which his Lordship later in life
fondly looked back as his “golden days.” He was, however, doomed to
suffer his first great bereavement in the decease of his young wife at
Worcester House in the Strand, on Sunday the 31st of May, 1635. She
was buried at St. Cadocus, the parish church of Raglan, within the
family vault beneath the Beaufort Chapel. He was thus left a widower
with the charge of his son and heir not above six years of age, and two
daughters.
A singular error, as to the date, occurring in all genealogies and
biographical accounts that mention the decease of Lady Herbert,
renders it the more important to refer to the following certificate
obtained from the Heralds’ Office:--
“The right honourable Lady the Lady Elizabeth, late wife of the right
honourable Edward Somerset Lord Herbert, son and heir to the right
honourable Henry Earl of Worcester, and daughter of Sir William Dormer,
Knight, eldest son of Robert Lord Dormer, of Wing, (which Sir William
died in the lifetime of his father) and sister to the now Earl of
Carnarvon, departed this mortal life at Worcester House in the Strand,
near London, on Sunday the last of May, 1635, leaving issue, Mr. Henry
Somerset, only son, about six years of age, Mrs. Anne eldest and Mrs.
Elizabeth youngest daughter. Her body was honourably conveyed to
Ragland, in the County of Monmouth in Wales, there to be interred. This
Certificate was taken by George Owen Yorke, herald, the 1st day of
June, 1635, to be registered in the Office of Arms, and testified by
the right honourable Lord,
“EDWARD HERBERT.”
Among the family papers is a letter bearing date this year, alluding
to Lord Herbert, but addressed by Secretary Coke to his Lordship’s
father:--
“RIGHT HONOURABLE,
“Upon a letter received from your noble son, the Lord Herbert, whereby
he signifieth, that the Deputation is now come from the Lord President
of Wales, I have according to his Lordship’s desire represented his
thankfulness to his Majesty, and have order from his Majesty to signify
to your Lordship that it is not only in this particular case; But
hereafter also he will be graciously mindful of your good service done
heretofore, in the Lieutenancies of Glamorgan and Monmouth, and your
willing resigning of them. And he hath also commanded me to tell the
Earl of Bridgewater, that he shall proceed therein with your Lordship
in the same manner the Earl of Northampton his predecessor did, and not
otherwise: which accordingly I have signified to his Lordship. And thus
having imparted to your Lordship both his Majesty’s gracious favour
towards yourself and your son, who in this business hath performed as
much respect and duty as can be expected from a worthy son, I humbly
take leave and so remain,
“Your Lordship’s humble servant,
“JOHN COKE.
“Whitehall, December 3rd. 1635.
To the right honourable THE EARL OF WORCESTER, &c.”
It is not at all unlikely that after the funeral his Lordship returned
to Worcester House. London would afford him many advantages for the
gratification of his scientific pursuits, not to be obtained in the
country. It appears, indeed, pretty evident that about this period he
set up in the Tower his large wheel for exhibiting self-motive power,
which the learned assume to be a mechanical fallacy, but which no
one has yet proved to general comprehension to be an impossibility.
In a scientific point of view, but particularly in connection with
the life of this remarkable man, a subject of this nature cannot be
lightly passed over. It affects his reputation more than appears on the
surface, as we shall show in the course of our observations.
It was a machine, consisting of a wheel fourteen feet in diameter,
carrying forty weights of fifty pounds each,[I] and is supposed to
have rotated on an axle, supported on two pillars or upright frames.
His Lordship has been very precise in describing all the circumstances
under which it was shown. There were present Charles the First,
accompanied by two extraordinary Ambassadors, the Duke of Richmond, the
Duke of Hamilton, with most of the Court; and Sir William Balfour was
at the time Lord Lieutenant of the Tower. Now the latter circumstance
would fix the date as not being later than 1641, while other facts
make it reasonable to suppose the experiment took place at least two
or three years earlier. Up to 1638 Charles the First had reigned for
ten years in comparative peace and leisure. May it not have been during
this lull in the portending storm of public discontent that royalty
deigned to inspect a singular piece of mechanism, supposed to move of
itself without any aid from external agency? In 1642, Sir John Byron
was made Lord Lieutenant of the Tower; and Sir William Balfour[J] was
in command of the Parliamentary forces at Edge-hill.
This wheel experiment may have been made in 1638–9, prior to the
decease of his lady, and during the most peaceable portion of his
Majesty’s reign; and indeed while his Lordship’s own domestic affairs
were wearing their most cheerful and agreeable aspect.
His Lordship has been charged with dealing in paradoxes, and none
greater than the one under consideration need be sought for. It
relates to a problem which for 2000 years has not only perplexed
mathematicians, but likewise been a stumbling-block to many ingenious
mechanicians during at least five centuries. What mathematicians
fail to prove and what mechanicians fail to produce, every modern
philosopher demands shall be stamped as an impossibility, as absurd
as it is impossible. Now the dilemma is, How has the author of the
“Century of Inventions” fallen into the common, vulgar error of
believing in the possibility of perpetual motion; and not only so, but
publicly exhibiting a machine pretending to that character?
We are not disposed to question either his talent, or his veracity,
hence the difficulty of offering any simple, direct, satisfactory reply
to what otherwise appears to be an easily answered interrogative.
Eminent writers of the seventeenth and previous centuries maintained
that perpetual motion was possible. Dr. Dee, in his very curious
preface to the first translation of Euclid into English, wrote
favourably on this very topic; so that, however the modern scientific
sceptic may blame his Lordship for want of skill, or, worse, of
veracity, his opinion was quite in accordance with the estimation in
which the subject was viewed in his day. But he goes a step farther, he
speaks of a practical result. Hence he leaves us no alternative but to
declare that he propounds either a truth or a falsehood; and if false
that he was either himself mistaken, or deceived by others. But either
way it is difficult to arrive at a thoroughly satisfactory conclusion,
even as to what his Lordship actually intended and performed in this
instance, owing to the usual vagueness of his own statements.
At 38 years of age Lord Herbert had enjoyed seven years of matrimonial
felicity, and had been during four years a widower. In 1639, his son
Henry would be 10 years old, his two daughters much younger, so that as
well for their education as for the gratification of his own scientific
investigations, he may have continued for some time to reside at
Worcester House: the Strand and all that neighbourhood being then in
the occupancy of families of title, wealth and high position. During
his father’s lifetime, the resident housekeeper was James Redman,
Esquire, as we learn from the list of his household.
The private studies and pursuits in which Lord Herbert was
indefatigably engaged, must have occupied his attention from an
innate love of physical science. The society in which he moved had no
tendency that way, while the times in which he lived were far from
affording any encouragement for such investigations as those in which
he was principally engaged. The metropolis in his day was without
coaches until 1625, when they were first used by the gentry, and ten
years later hackney coaches were considered to have arrived at such a
dangerous increase that their plying was restrained by law; and London
streets were either so bad, or the treasury so low, that penalties
were levied on all heavy vehicles passing over the highways. It is
characteristic of the state of our laws at that period, that Dr.
Leighton was for his writings sentenced to barbarous mutilations, as
also happened in 1633 to the unfortunate learned Mr. Prynne, and four
years later to John Lilburn. The pillory, whipping culprits through
the streets, cropping ears and other mutilations and barbarities were
ordinary punishments, and in 1636 the plague was raging throughout the
metropolis and its suburbs, with all its accustomed terrors.
But not in this view alone do we see little to inspirit him in the
ardent pursuit of mechanical employments, another and more serious
obstacle arose from his belonging, like his father and ancestors, to
the Roman Catholic faith. The laws against Papists were inconsistently
stringent in England on religious grounds; and strange to say,
in imperial Rome, the very seat of the papacy, absurdly severe
denunciations were pronounced against even the free discussion of
scientific subjects. On the memorable 22nd of June, 1633, Galileo,
prosecuted by the Inquisition at Rome, was compelled to abjure his
astronomical theories and discoveries as heretical! The inquiry
with its results must have deeply interested Lord Herbert; but what
could he hope to gain even from his own party, as the inventor of
a “semi-omnipotent engine?” Thus situated he was surrounded by
circumstances nowise calculated to stimulate his mental activity in
the peculiar occupations that employed his leisure and his fortune;
but the fact offers an invaluable proof of the intense satisfaction
an inquiring mind always experiences in the realization of its mental
speculations.
There is every reason to believe that his studies were completed, his
tastes fixed, his experiments pretty well matured at this period,
and that it was, therefore, the occasion of stamping his future
character. He was then terminating his “golden days,” to enter upon a
very different career. While, therefore, most anxious to avoid every
appearance of substituting fictions for facts, we feel impelled to
indulge in an attempt to account for his long serious devotion to
employments so apparently foreign to either his education, his station
in life, or the necessities of the times; while, indeed, on the other
hand, all operated against him, owing to the darkness, ignorance,
persecution and prevailing prejudices of the age.
It appears from his published work that Lord Herbert was better versed
in mathematical than in classical literature. His mental activity may
have been promoted by physical causes, assuming that from delicacy
of constitution he may have been thereby disposed to those studious
habits, to which he was ever after so much attached; the Vandyck
portrait of him in his youth would indicate that he was not constituted
for undergoing much severity of exercise in the fatiguing sports and
pastimes then in vogue.
In 1639, his confidential workman, Caspar Kaltoff, would have expended
eleven years in constructing models and machines to establish the
practicability of the many novel schemes which his Lordship had, up to
that time, developed. Meanwhile, his own reading was no doubt pursued
with vigour, and we cannot believe him to have been unpossessed of
the celebrated authorities among English and foreign writers. He must
have studied with interest Ramelli’s very elaborate volume, 1588, on
machines, illustrated with one hundred and ninety-five large, finely
executed copper-plate engravings; the popular Spiritalia of Hero of
Alexandria; with even, perhaps, the works of the engineer and architect
Solomon De Caus, published in 1615; together with the labours of many
kindred writers. Judging, however, from internal evidence, there was
one, among many English authors, whose work especially gratified his
taste, the “Mysteries of Nature and Art,” by John Bate, which went
through two editions, dating 1634 and 1635, containing a “Booke of
Water-workes,” treating of “evaporating water, and rarifying ayre.”
The peculiarity of such studies was sufficient to separate him from
the fashionable society of Courts, and the too frequently frivolous
society attendant even at Raglan Castle. If he then made few enemies,
his conversation and pursuits were little calculated to enlarge his
social acquaintance, and may even have early inspired a belief in his
possessing equal eccentricity and enthusiasm. His memory, however,
cannot fail to be cherished by posterity as the illustrious possessor
of a highly cultivated intellect, displaying a singularly powerful,
original, protean inventive genius.
Footnotes
[Illustration: H. Herbert (autograph) Henry, 1st Marquis of Worcester]
[A] The annexed specimen of his Lordship’s autograph, during
his father’s lifetime, is from a MS. certificate in the British
Museum dated 21st May, 1604.
[B] Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1603–1610. Edited by
Mrs. M. A. E. Green. 8vo. 1857, page 529.
[109] An. à Wood. Vol. 3, pp. 199–204.
[Illustration: E. Worcester (autograph) Edward, 4th Earl of Worcester]
[C] Bodleian Library, “Carte Papers--Earl of Huntingdon’s Papers, Temp.
Eliz. Car. II. 77.” No 120. The annexed engraving is a
facsimile of his autograph to the letter in question.
[5] Atkyns.
[D] Henry, Duke of Beaufort, died in 1699, at 70 years of age, so
that he must have been born in 1629.
[E] Dedication to the “Century.”
[F] Ibid.
[G] “The Century,” articles Nos. 21 and 26.
[H] The “Century,” Dedication.
[I] The “Century,” Article No. 56.
[J] It is not certain how long Sir William Balfour was Lord
Lieutenant of the Tower prior to 1641.