Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/239

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Somerset
233
Somerset

shire, and, when the civil war broke out, supplied Charles I with vast sums of money (see Warburton, Rupert, iii. 515–31). The king paid frequent and prolonged visits to Raglan during the war, and created the earl Marquis of Worcester on 2 Nov. 1642, governor and commander-in-chief of Raglan Castle on 20 July 1644, and lieutenant-general of the forces in Monmouthshire on 9 Dec. 1645. The marquis died in December 1646. An engraving of an anonymous portrait is given in Doyle's ‘Official Baronage.’ In 1650 was published ‘Worcester's Apophthegms, or Witty Sayings of the Rt Hon. Henry, late marquis and earl of Worcester,’ with a curious woodcut representing Worcester and Charles I, with a man behind the king holding a drawn sword (London, 12mo).

Edward, who was styled Lord Herbert ‘of Ragland’ from 1628 to 1644, was educated privately and abroad, where he visited Germany, Italy, and France. He was made councillor of Wales on 12 May 1633, and deputy lord-lieutenant of Monmouthshire in November 1635; but his time was mainly devoted to mechanical studies and experiments. On the outbreak of the civil war he was commissioned to levy forces against the Scots in 1640. In June 1642 the king granted him a commission of array in Monmouthshire; but in August he offered to suspend it if parliament would refrain from sending the militia into that county. This offer was refused, and Herbert was made the king's lieutenant-general in South Wales. He raised six regiments and garrisoned Raglan Castle. He also acted as intermediary in the money transactions between his father and Charles I. On 3 Sept. 1642 he was summoned to answer for his conduct before the House of Commons, and, on his non-attendance, was declared an enemy to the realm. Towards the end of October he was surprised by the parliamentarians at Presteign. The town was captured, but Herbert escaped. For the rest of the autumn he was engaged in operations in the Forest of Dean; but they were generally unsuccessful, partly through the strained relations between the Marquis of Hertford and Herbert, who could ill brook Hertford's superior command in counties where his father was almost universal landlord (Webb, Civil War in Herefordshire, i. 30–31 et sqq.; Phillips, Civil War in Wales, pp. 103, 122). His relations with Rupert were not more friendly, and he was suspected because of his Roman catholicism. In February 1642–3 he took part in the unsuccessful siege of Gloucester; but he was defeated at Highnam by Sir William Waller in March, when the killing of six hundred Welshmen, the capture of a thousand more, and Herbert's own death were reported (A Famous Victorie obtained by Sir William Waller, London, 31 March 1643, 4to). On 4 April following he was appointed lieutenant-general, under the Prince of Wales, of the associated counties of Hereford, Monmouth, Glamorgan, Brecknock, and Radnor, and later in the year he is said to have captured Monmouth and won other victories of a somewhat doubtful character (Dircks, pp. 56–63).

In the following year Herbert, having been created Earl of Glamorgan, was selected for a mission of the highest importance. The scheme had been mooted of retrieving Charles I's fortunes in England by calling in the Irish rebels and Roman catholic troops from abroad. Glamorgan was marked out for this delicate and dangerous enterprise by his wealth, by his intimate connection through his second marriage with the Irish nobility, and by his devotion to the Roman catholic religion. The genuineness of the commissions and of the patents on the authority of which he acted—a question involving the character of Charles I—has since been one of the most intricate and fiercely debated points in English history. But, according to the most expert authority, these commissions and patents, though drawn up in a hasty and irregular manner and lacking the necessary official formalities, were genuine (cf. J. H. Round in Academy, 8 Dec. 1883; S. R. Gardiner in English Hist. Rev. ii. 687–708).

On 1 April 1644 Herbert received a patent for his creation as Baron Beaufort of Caldecote and Earl of Glamorgan. On the same day he was also given a commission (printed in Collins, Peerage, 1779, i. 206–7) as generalissimo of three armies—English, Irish, and foreign—and as admiral of a fleet at sea. He was empowered to distribute patents of peerages and baronetcies sealed in blank; his son (afterwards first Duke of Beaufort) was to receive in marriage the king's youngest daughter, Elizabeth, with a portion of 300,000l.; and Glamorgan himself was to have the Garter and dukedom of Somerset. In return he was to raise two armies, each of ten thousand Irish, of which one was to land in North Wales, and the other in South Wales. A third—of six thousand men—was to be raised abroad by the help of the pope and catholic princes, with whom Glamorgan was granted full powers to treat, offering as an inducement the remission of the penal laws against Roman catholics. He was further, on 4 May 1644 (the date was subsequently altered to 1645), granted a patent for the dukedom of Somerset, the original of which