<g>Royal Visit to Raglan</g>, which in its loyal devotion remained unshaken by these reverses; and the following anecdote gives us a favourable idea of the good humour, combined with courtly magnificence, with which Lord Worcester entertained the King on his first visit to the Castle. We relate the anecdote on the authority of the family Chaplain:-- “Sir Thomas Somerset, brother to the Marquess, had a house which they called Troy--the principal residence of the Duke of Beaufort--within five miles of Raglan Castle. Sir Thomas Somerset being a neate man, both within and without his house, as he was a complete gentleman of himself every way, delighted very much in fine gardens and orchards, and in replenishing and ordering them with all the varieties of choicest fruits that could be got, and in defending his new plantations from the coldness of the climate by the benefit of art. The earth, that was so much made of, proved so grateful to him, that, at the same time that the King happened to be at his brother’s house at Raglan, it yielded him wherewithal to send his brother Worcester such a present, as at that time of the year and place, was able to make the King and all his lords believe that the Sovereign of the Planets, with all his prime electors, had new changed the Poles; and that <g>Wales</g>, the refuse and outcast of the fair garden of England, had fairer and riper fruit growing upon her stone rubbish, than England’s levels had in all her beds. This, presented to the Marquess, he could not suffer to be presented to the King by any other hands except his own. In comes the Marquess, at the latter end of supper, led by the arm, having such a goodly presence with him, that his being led became him, rather like some ceremony of state, than shew of impotence; and his slow pace, occasioned by his infirmity, expressed a Spanish gravity, rather than feebleness. Thus, with a silver dish in each hand filled with rarities, and a little basket upon his arm, as a supply, in case his Majesty should be over bountiful of his favours to the ladies that were standers by, he makes his third obeysance and thus speaks:--