Marquis of Worcester

“ It would be doing deep injustice to the Marquis of Worcester, to judge him in all respects rigidly by modern fashions, customs, and habits of thought. The modern critic, in simple ignorance of the age, might exclaim with just indignation against the promulgating an invention to cheat at dice. We have many examples to prove, that the Marquis was not singular in proposing so questionable an invention, and we can only consider such schemes put forth as marvels in themselves and warnings to the unwary. ”

“ It is very humiliating to find the Marquis of Worcester stripped, not only of his great wealth, but of even empty titles; and this latter act not by professed enemies, but through his peers conjointly with his very sovereign! There is something so utterly contemptible in the whole proceedings, which deprive without substitution, and sap the wealth of any man without an adequate effort at remedial measures, that we feel perplexed how to account for treatment so heartless and discreditable ”

“ CHAPTER IV. HENRY, EARL OF WORCESTER.—CREATED MARQUIS OF WORCESTER.—RAGLAN CASTLE.
The general aspect of public affairs in 1641, foreshadowed the coming storm. Charles the First had departed from Whitehall; civil war raged through the length and breadth of the land, terminating in fearful consequences to the monarch and all his wealthiest loyal supporters.
On the 2nd of November, 1642, [88] Henry was created Marquis of Worcester, being the first of his family raised to that dignity. He would then be 65 years of age, but does not appear to have enjoyed uniform good health ”

“ The royal cause was becoming desperate, and the King, never over-scrupulous, then endeavoured to obtain speedy assistance at all hazards. After taking the sacrament at Oxford, in sacred repudiation of employing papists, yet was he privately urging his generals to engage all who would serve. The fact of the Marquis of Worcester being of the proscribed religion was no obstacle to his maintaining correspondence with him, personally communicating with his son, and constantly draining their fortunes and other resources. ”

“ His royal master was profuse in the professions of the most sincere attachment to the person of his Lordship; his acts and words being such as were best calculated to ensnare an honourable man quite incapable of insincerity. But the King, after his own fashion, had sound reasons for his conduct; the Marquis of Worcester was still rich, and might continue his liberality; and, as belonging to the Roman Catholic faith, the son might promote his measures in Ireland. ”

“ In a memorandum relating to various grants, among others, occurs one to the Marquis of Worcester, thus noticed:—“March, 1663⁄4. That by Act of Parliament his Invention of a Water-commanding Engine, granted him for ninety-nine years, one tenth reserved to the King. The King remitted the tenth to the Marquis upon a surrender of a Warrant dated at Oxford, 5th Jan. 20 Car. I. by which his then Majesty did grant the Marquis lands to the value of £40,000, in consideration of a debt due to the Marquis from his Majesty.” ”

“ We now approach the great event of the Marquis of Worcester’s life, that for which alone, through all time, he will be distinguished, as pre-eminent among the luminaries who have advanced those branches of science which have most contributed to promote and extend the necessaries, conveniences, and comforts of mankind, thereby giving a decided impulse to civilization. ”

“ There is every reason to believe that the Marquis of Worcester pursued his scientific inquiries both in secrecy and seclusion. This might arise from his early domestic habits, particularly during his married life, commencing in 1628, when he first engaged Caspar Kaltoff. We never find him associated with, or mentioned by, men of his time, which, therefore, leads to the supposition that he was naturally of a recluse and retiring disposition. ”

“ Whatever interest the history of the life of the Marquis of Worcester may derive from other sources, the philosopher will dwell alone with delight on that period which divulged the extraordinary inventive mental capabilities of such a singular scholar and early man of science. ”

“ We, therefore, [Pg 364] find that the one hundred articles are as explicit as any of the patent specifications of, and prior to, the reign of Charles the Second. Yet men of unquestionable literary taste, but unacquainted with these simple facts, have charged the Marquis of Worcester with mystifying his statements, by writing too enigmatically, without considering his promise, had he lived, “to leave to posterity a book” containing “the means to put in execution all these inventions;” ”

“ It will be requisite to relate some particulars in reference to these royal visits from their connection with this memoir, incidentally proving the position and prospects of the Earl of Glamorgan; while they account for much of both his father’s and his own misplaced confidence in the fickle monarch and false friend, whose obligations to the aged Marquis of Worcester and his noble minded son were equally of personal as well as political importance to him, during the many mischances of his career at that most critical period of his reign. ”

“ His Majesty united so many inconsistencies of character that he completely deluded not the Earl alone but the entire Roman Catholic party throughout the land. He had succeeded in draining the Marquis of Worcester of his enormous wealth, and had not blushed to degrade his son, the Earl, by a public accusation (which his private conduct repudiated) to give colour to his own sophisms. ”

“ He now commands in chief in the absence of the Lord Marquis [of] Hertford, and besides his dutifulness unto you, our command is, that his power and yours shall [be] the same, as your hearts are to our service. The acceptance whereof we shall not fail to make appear on all occasions, whereof you may rest assured. Given under and signed at our Court at Oxford, the 5th day of January, in the eighteenth year of our reign, 1642. [C]
“To Our Right trusty and right entirely beloved Cousin, Henry, Marquis of Worcester.” ”

“ Society; Bishop Wilkins, the author of “Mathematical Magic”; the Honourable Robert Boyle, Sir William Petty, Lord Viscount Brouncker, and other distinguished personages.
Without positive facts to guide us we are ever in danger of misjudging a bygone age, and in the present instance it would be imprudent to hazard an opinion on what is no less true than strange, that the Marquis of Worcester entirely failed to arouse public inquiry into the merits of his invention: being treated throughout with an indifference, which, to modern apprehension, appears wholly inexplicable. ”

“ And it is noticed that, “As for noble persons who lost great estates, and endured much hardship for his Majesty, the late Duchess of Buckingham, the late Marquis of Worcester, [O] and the late Earl of Shrewsbury were Penitents of the Society, as other prime nobility yet in being.” ”

“ In this nineteenth century we can calmly look with some wonder and astonishment on the indifference of the seventeenth, in failing to realize at least some of the Marquis of Worcester’s remarkable Inventions, of which we shall shortly have to treat more at large.
On the 18th of September, 1646, the House of Commons “Ordered, That the Lady Herbert, wife of the Lord Herbert of Raglan, shall have Mr. Speaker’s pass to go into France, only according to the pass given her by Sir Thomas Fairfax.” ”

“ The Marquis might well allude in his Century to “the melancholy which had lately seized upon him;” his sole desire being to pay his debts and possess “a competency to live according to his birth and quality;” yet every way frustrated, month by month, year by year, even after his last ray of hope was realized in the return of the exiled sovereign. He makes slight allusion to enemies, and none to public neglect. ”

“ Every circumstance connected with this petition acquires interest from the peculiar position of the times, and of all parties interested. The Marquis of Worcester had rendered himself highly obnoxious to the dominant party, he was beyond their power, a recusant and a papist, and here was his noble Lady petitioning the Cromwellian Parliament in respect to her rights, a papist demanding her fifths at the hands of her husband’s bitterest enemies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The histories of men as of nations require facts for their basis, judgment to guide in their arrangement, discretion to direct a wise selection, and a knowledge of the whole to perfect the desired work. The mixed character of the Marquis of Worcester has ever been a stumbling-block to the purely classical scholar, the divine, the politician, and the lawyer ”

“ The sad necessities of the times and the perilous position in which his tortuous policy had placed him, obliged Charles the First to court the assistance and presence of the wealthiest among the nobility, than whom none then ranked higher than the Marquis of Worcester, who, as we have seen, his Majesty pressingly sues, through his son, Lord Herbert, at Nottingham, for still further monetary supplies. ”

“ When we compare this long continued apathetic feeling, [Pg 499] this absence of forecast to form some strikingly favourable judgment of the value of the novelty thus published, although in its earliest stage, with the superior knowledge on the subject evinced by the writings, labour, and conduct of the Marquis of Worcester, at least thirty-six years before Savery; it is then, and then only, perhaps, that we become fully alive to his almost prescient judgment, that could, as if inspired, prognosticate so truthfully as he did the future benefits of his invention to mankind. ”

“ Edward Somerset died 1627–8. [93]
Dr. Bayly, in his capacity of chaplain to the then Marquis of Worcester, appears to have resided in the Castle from 1643 to 1646. His collection of the Marquis’s sayings and family anecdotes, under the title of “Apophthegms,” includes some antecedent matters related on the authority of others. He expressly remarks:—“I have lived in Raglan Castle three years, and in all that time I never saw a man drunk, nor heard an oath amongst any of all his servants; neither did I ever see a better ordered family.” ”

“ Although this may appear too absurd in this light, something very similar has been proposed as a kind of compromise in the contest between England and France, the “little national rivalry” between which countries might be settled, would Englishmen but give up all further advocacy of the Marquis of Worcester’s claim. This is not the reason given, but it is the happy result which would follow; and it is urged against the invention, that there is so much “doubtfulness existing” about it, that it is a wonder any one takes further trouble in the matter. ”

“ Sir Richard Browne, ambassador at Paris, in his correspondence with John Evelyn, when writing from Paris, the 3rd of August, 1648, incidentally observes in a postscript:—“Our Court wants money, and lives very quietly at St. Germains: where no peer appears but my Lord Jermin. The Marquis of Worcester, the Lords Digby and Hatton, though [Pg 190] yet in France, yet live for the most part in Paris.” ”

“ That of the Marquis of Worcester was used for the purpose of elevating water for practical purposes at Vauxhall, near London. It was still earlier used at the home of Worcester, Raglan Castle, where the openings cut in the wall for its reception are still to be seen, as in Fig. 7. ”

“ To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.—The most humble Petition of Edward, Marquis of Worcester:—
“Sheweth,
“That your Petitioner overwhelmed with the very, very much he hath to say, and fearful too long to detain your sacred Majesty therewith from more serious affairs, humbly prayeth that you will be pleased to refer him to be heard by the Lord High Chancellor of England, the Lord Privy Seal, the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Lotherdale, the [Pg 283] Lord Arlington, the Lord Ashley and Mr. ”

“ The “Century of Inventions,” gradually increasing in public estimation through two hundred years, owes its vitality to its remarkable ingenuity and its concentration of thought; and it cannot fail to happen that each succeeding age will inquire, with increasing interest, into every particular of the singular and touching history of its noble author.
END OF THE LIFE.
Footnotes
[A] The annexed autograph of this great ancestor of the Marquis of Worcester, is obtained from a document in the British Museum. Cotton. MSS. Vesp. F. xiii. fol. ”

“ No. 61, is a way for Muskets, No. 62, for Harquebusses, and No. 63, for Sakers, &c. which again [Pg 354] can but be taken as representing one invention variously applied. These examples would remove four other inventions from the list, thereby reducing the number of inventions, due to the Marquis of Worcester in the Century, to 92. ”

“ The action of the high pressure engine depends upon the great elastic force acquired by steam, when exposed to the action of heat at very high temperatures.—It may indeed be considered as a return to the principle of Brancas and the Marquis of Worcester, as in this engine no condensing water is necessary ”