mission to France in the same year, and general suspicion having been created by the rebellion of the earls, Somerset was, on the petition of the commons, declared loyal. In 1402 the commons also petitioned that he might be restored to his marquisate, but Somerset wisely declined on the ground that the title marquis was strange to Englishmen.
During that year (1402) Somerset was actively employed. On 27 April he was sent to negotiate with the Duke of Guelders; and in June he escorted to Cologne the king's daughter Blanche on her marriage to Ludwig of Bavaria. He had been witness to Henry IV's marriage by proxy to Joan of Brittany at Eltham on 3 April, and later in the year he was sent to fetch the new queen to England. In October he was one of the lords permitted by Henry to confer with the commons on condition that this constitutional innovation was not to be taken as a precedent (Stubbs, iii. 37). He also saw some service with the fleet, capturing several Spanish ships in the channel. He seems to have taken no part in the suppression of the Percies' revolt in 1403, but on 28 Sept. he was made lieutenant of South Wales. On 13 Feb. 1403-4 he was nominated joint-commissioner to treat with France, and on 20 Oct. 1404 was appointed deputy-constable of England. Early in the same year he was one of the ministers whom Henry IV, as a further condescension to public feeling, nominated in parliament to form his great and continual council (ib. iii. 44). From 23 Dec. 1406 to 8 May 1407 he was admiral of the northern and western fleets.
Somerset, who had been in failing health for some time, died in St. Catherine's Hospital by the Tower on 16 March 1409-10 (not, as all the peerages say, on 21 March), and was buried in the Abbey church on Tower Hill (English Chron. ed. Davies, p. 37). An alabaster monument was afterwards erected to his memory in St. Michael's chapel, Canterbury Cathedral. He married, before 23 April 1399, Margaret, daughter of Thomas Holland, second earl of Kent [q.v.], and by her, who afterwards married Thomas, duke of Clarence [q.v.], had issue—three sons and two daughters. The three sons—Henry (1401-1418), John (1403-1444) [q.v.], and Edmund (1405?-1455) [q.v.]—all succeeded as earls of Somerset; John and Edmund were also dukes of Somerset. Of the daughters, Jane or Joan married James I of Scotland, and is separately noticed [see Jane, d. 1445], and Margaret married Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon.
[Cal. Close and Patent Rolls; Rolls of Parliament, vol. iii.; Rymer's Fœdera; Ordinances of the Privy Council, ed. Nicolas Walsingham, Trokelowe, Eulog. Historiarum, Waurin, and Annales Henrici IV (Rolls Ser.); Monstrelet (ed. Soc. de l'Hist. de France); English Chronicle (Camden Soc.); Bentley's Excerpta Historica and Hist. of the Royal Navy; Stubbs's Const. History; Ramsay's Lancaster and York; Wylie's Hist. of Henry IV (gives full references for facts of Somerset's career); Doyle's Official Baronage; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage.]
BECKER, LYDIA ERNESTINE (1827–1890), advocate of women's suffrage, daughter of Hannibal Leigh Becker and Mary his wife, daughter of James Duncuft of Hollinwood, was born in Cooper Street, Manchester, on 24 Feb. 1827. She was the eldest of fifteen children. Her grandfather, Ernest Hannibal Becker, was a German, naturalised in England, who settled in business in Manchester. Her father had calico-printing works at Reddish, near Stockport, and afterwards chemical works at Altham, near Accrington, Lancashire, where from about 1838 to 1865 she chiefly lived. During her residence in the country she developed a great love for botany and astronomy, and in 1864 published a small volume entitled 'Botany for Novices.' She read a paper before the British Association in 1869, 'On Alternation in the Structure of Lychnis Diurna, observed in connection with the Development of a Parasitic Fungus.' She wrote an elementary treatise on astronomy, but it was circulated in manuscript only. When she removed with her father to Manchester in 1865 she started a society of ladies for the study of literature and science, and took a room and gave free lectures; the results, however, were not encouraging. The subject of women's suffrage appears to have been first brought to her notice at a meeting of the Social Science Association at Manchester in October 1866, when a paper by Madame Bodichon (Barbara Leigh-Smith) [q. v. Suppl.] was read. Thenceforth she became one of the most active workers in the cause, and when the Manchester women's suffrage committee was started by her assistance in January 1867 she became secretary. Her article on 'Female Suffrage' in the 'Contemporary Review' for March 1867 made her name widely known. Later in the same year the Manchester committee joined with similar organisations in other parts of the country, and the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage was formed. Miss Becker continuing as secretary. The public attention given to the subject
