Scientific Studies; or, Practical, in Contrast with Chimerical Pursuits — John Shaqi
Scientific Studies; or, Practical, in Contrast with Chimerical PursuitsDircks, Henry
History
Scientific Studies; or, Practical, in Contrast with Chimerical Pursuits
Dircks, Henry
Science; Worcester, Edward Somerset, Marquis of, 1601-1667
We have thus before us a broad outline of the Marquis of Worcester's
birth, education, studies, and scientific pursuits. His tastes and
employments were not suited to a successful political or military
career, at a time when the rupture between the Crown and the Parliament
rendered it necessary for every man to take the side either of the
Cavaliers or the Roundheads. Both father and son displayed unbounded
loyalty, although professing the Roman Catholic faith. Had they, like
many other noble families, adopted the policy of taking opposite
courses, the family might eventually have retained estates which were
forfeited when the King was deposed, and were principally enjoyed by
Cromwell. Raglan Castle was demolished, all that could be carried away
was sold, the strong tower or citadel was partially blown up, its ditch
left dry, and all that could be most readily spoiled was mutilated, even
to the marble and alabaster monuments in Raglan Church, raised to the
memory of ancestors of the family. Such ruthless destruction and pillage
has failed, however, to obliterate the towers, walls, arches, chambers,
and numerous vaults of that once princely residence.
From the year 1601 to 1641, (forty years of his life) was a period to
which he refers as his "Golden Age" in the dedication of his "Century."
While that from 1641 to 1647-8, (when he fled from Ireland to France,)
was the most exciting, exhausting, and disastrous of his whole
existence, and closed with utter ruin to himself and his family. He had
then living his second wife, Henry, his son and heir, and two daughters.
The family town mansion, Worcester House in the Strand, partly used as a
State Paper Office, was eventually granted to the Marchioness of
Worcester for her residence. The wearisomeness and distress attendant
on his residence as a refugee in France during four years, was
embittered by above two years imprisonment in the Tower, the result of
his venturing to revisit London while proscribed by the Parliament as
"an enemy and traitor to the Commonwealth," all such being threatened
that they shall "die without mercy, whenever they shall be found within
the limits of this nation." Burton, in his interesting Diary of Oliver
Cromwell's Parliament, says in reference to the case of the Marquis on
this occasion:--"It was urged he was an old man, had lain long in
prison, and the small-pox then raging under the same roof where he lay;
and he had not, as was said, done any actions of hostility, but only as
a soldier; and in that capacity had always shown civilities to the
English prisoners and Protestants. It was therefore ordered that he
should be bailed out of prison." He was probably then about fifty-three
years of age, but so harassed and so worn down by fatigue that he might
well appear to be a prematurely "old man." He was not, however, too old
to write his "Century" in 1655, and to re-write and publish it in 1663;
to apply for and obtain an Act of Parliament for his great invention of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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