and display of fashion. It was not to his taste, nor did it suit with his fancy, to solicit notice by any of those attractions at which the public gaze with temporary admiration. Grosvenor Square was not disturbed by his festivities; but at Badminton and Troy House (Monmouthshire) every visitor felt the honour of his reception and was delighted with the satisfaction that accompanied it. In politics he supported a tranquil dignified independence. He never engaged in the ranks of opposition, and the support he generally gave to his Majesty's Ministers could never be justly attributed to any motives but such as were perfectly consistent with the integrity which distinguished his honourable life." He was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry Charles, sixth Duke of Beaufort, who married Lady Charlotte Leveson-Gower, daughter of the first Marquess of Stafford. His youngest brother, Fitzroy-JamesHenry, was the well-known Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the General of the Crimean War, created the 20th of October 1852 Baron Raglan, whose son now enjoys that title. The sixth Duke, who died November 23, 1835, was elected in March 1788 to the House of Commons for the borough of Monmouth, in 1790 for the city of Bristol, and for the county of Gloucester from 1796 down to his accession to the Dukedom. He also succeeded his father as Lord-Lieutenant of the counties of Monmouth and Brecon. In 1805, he became Knight of the Garter, and on the death of the Duke of Portland, in 1809, was brought forward unwillingly as a candidate for the Chancellorship of the University of Oxford, in opposition to Lord Grenville and Lord Eldon. After a severe contest the Duke was left at the bottom of the poll with 238 votes, Lord Grenville

polling 406, and Lord Eldon 398. In 1810 he was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, and in 1812 Constable of St Briaval's Castle and Warden of the Forest of Dean. He bore the Queen's crown at the coronation of William IV. in 1831. He never took any prominent part in politics, though steadily supporting the successive Tory administrations. He was a liberal supporter of charitable and religious institutions, and much beloved in his own neighbourhoods for his genial and kindly manners, and his lavish private charities. For many years during the hunting season he resided at Heythrop, in Oxfordshire, where he kept a pack of foxhounds. Soon after the destruction of that house by fire he removed the kennel and his stud altogether into Gloucestershire. His second son, Lord Granville Charles Henry Somerset, attained to some eminence in Parliament and in the Peel administrations. Henry, the eldest son, who succeeded as seventh Duke, entered the army as an officer in the 16th Hussars, and served in the Peninsula on the staff of the Duke of Wellington. He was taken prisoner by the French under Soult, but remained captive only a few months. In 1813 he was returned to Parliament for the borough of Monmouth, for which place he sat down to the general election in 1832. From May 24, 1816, to March 15, 1819, he was a junior Lord of the Admiralty. In 1832, the first election after the Reform Act, the Marquess of Worcester was defeated at Monmouth by the present Lord Llanover, then Mr Benjamin Hall, but in January 1835 was returned for West Gloucestershire. Sir Robert Peel gave him the Garter on the accession of the Conservatives to power in 1841.

Like all his family he was courtly and courteous in his bearing in an eminent degree, and these manners were enhanced by a singularly fine and stately person. He had much the same tastes with his father, and survives on canvass as a Master of the "Royal Hunt" and the "Badminton Hunt," and in the writings of enthusiastic sportsmen. "In the palmy days of Melton, when 'the Old Club' flourished, a discussion arose as to who was the most popular sportsman in England, and it was at once unanimously conceded that the Marquess of Worcester was the man." He was pre-eminent as a "whip" in the days of stagecoaching, and when the "Four-in-Hand Club" was started, some thirty years ago, "his Grace's team of skewbalds and well-appointed drag was always considered the crack turn-out." He had also a small but well-appointed racing stud. He was a liberal patron of music and the drama, a great supporter of Her Majesty's Theatre in its days of disaster, and gave the name of his seat to a drink he had invented, now better known as claret-cup. He died November 17, 1853, and was succeeded as eighth and present Duke by his son, Henry Charles Fitzroy, chiefly known in connection with the usual family tastes and magnificence and as the Master of the Badminton Hunt.

The family have remained consistent Tories, but have exercised little personal influence in politics independently of that commanded by their great social position and the "sustained magnificence of their stately lives." There is little need to analyse a character which, with one exception, has been for four centuries perfectly consistent, and may be very briefly summed up. The Somersets are Plantagenets.

The Berkeleys.

HE Berkeleys are, perhaps, the very best representatives of the popular idea of the "barons bold." They are, according to the most probable account, the descendants of a Danish pirate, or sea-king, whichever he was, who turned tradesman in Bristol, and for generations they have been able barons, men proud and pugnacious to the last degree, guilty occasionally of most forms of evil except skulking, fighting kings, fighting barons, extending their territories by every means, and holding their own by main force, but with something of high chivalry and clearsightedness too. As nobles go, they must be accepted as belonging to the blue blood of England, for they are certainly,— and by certainty we imply proof quite outside what peerage-makers accept as evidence, the descendants of Robert Fitz-Harding, who, in the reign of Stephen, made himself a baron by the strong hand, and they may be entitled to trace a still more ancient lineage. Their history is as old as that of England, and they are of the few remaining houses which resisted John and extorted Magna Charta. Who Fitz-Harding was is not quite so certain, but it is fairly established that he

was the son of one Harding who died in 1115-filled the office of Prepositor, i.e., Præpositus of Bristol, and is sometimes called "Consul" and "Patricius." The name "Prepositor" seems to have been given for a considerable time to the chief magistrate or bailiff of many English towns. He was the representative of the King or other lord of the town, and, according to Madox, superintended the estates and levied the revenues. Harding is usually placed in the reign of William the Conqueror, but others place him in the reign of Edward the Confessor. In either case there is a chronological difficulty, which Seyer, who has examined the whole subject very minutely and skilfully in his History of Bristol' (to which we are indebted for most of our present account), can only explain by supposing that the grandfather as well as the father of Robert Fitz-Harding bore the name of Harding, and that they were in succession Prepositors of Bristol. There are several accounts of the origin of Harding of Bristol. According to one, very commonly found in chronicle-writers, and in genealogists of the Berkeleys, he was a younger son of one of the Kings of Denmark. Sweyn Estrith, the nephew of Canute, is usually selected for this purpose; but Seyer has completely exploded this idea, as well as the whole theory of the royal paternity of Harding. The next theory is that he is the same with Harding, the son of Elnoth, "Stallarius," the "Stallard," or Master of the Horse to Edward the Confessor and Harold, a Saxon who was killed in opposing an invasion of the West by Harold's sons, two or three years after the battle of Hastings. This is a much more tenable hypothesis than the former; but seems,