The brave old cavalier did not long survive the surrender and
destruction of his ancestral home. The same year he died, and was
succeeded in his title by his son Edward, the famous author of the
"Century of Inventions." It is scarcely too much to say that had this
man been divested of rank and fortune, and had he been furnished with
the requisite motive for exertion, he might have anticipated the work of
Watt and Stephenson. As it was, the discoveries he made served but to
amuse his leisure hours. The Marquis of Worcester was well-nigh the last
of his race about whose doings his countrymen would much care to be
informed. His son was created Duke of Beaufort in 1682, and with the
attainment of the highest rank in the peerage came a cessation of mental
activity in the family. One more Somerset, however, deserves honorable
mention--Fitzroy, who was aide-de-camp to Wellington, and lost an arm at
Waterloo. Raised to the peerage in 1852 as Lord Raglan, he was named two
years later to the command of the English army in the Crimea. What he
did, and what he did not, in that post, is still remembered. In truth he
was a gallant soldier, distracted by contradictory instructions, feeling
keenly the criticisms of newspaper writers, who complained that one of
the strongest fortresses in the world was not taken in a few weeks. The
siege had lasted eight months, when Lord Raglan resolved to make one
desperate effort to carry the place by assault on the 18th of June, the
fortieth anniversary of Waterloo. The attack failed, and the allies were
repulsed with severe loss. Ten days later the English general succumbed
to sickness and chagrin.
The Dukes of St. Albans enjoy precedence after the Dukes of Beaufort.
William Amelius Aubrey De Vere Beauclerk, present and tenth duke, is
lineally descended from the Merry Monarch and Nell Gwynn, and through
the marriage of the first duke, from the De Veres, Earls of Oxford. His
Grace is Hereditary Grand Falconer, a pleasant little sinecure of some
$6,000 a year. Of the Dukes of Saint Albans history has nothing to say.
The ninth duke married the widow of Mr. Thomas Coutts, of banking
renown.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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