The Dukes (43 page)
37.
Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan,
The Glitter and the Gold,
p. 107.
38.
E. F. Benson,
op. cit.,
p. 177.
39.
Countess of Warwick,
Afterthoughts,
p. 77.
40.
Margot Asquith,
Autobiography,
p. 93.
41.
Chips Channon,
Diaries,
p. 450.
42.
Jessica Mitford,
Hons and Rebels,
p. 104.
43.
Lord Hervey and His Friends,
p. 216.
44.
Walpole (ed. Cunningham), Vol. VIII, p. 253.
45.
Journal
of Elizabeth Lady Holland, Vol. I, p. 182.
46.
William Day,
Reminiscences of the Turf,
p. 136.
47.
Duke of Portland,
Men, Women and Things,
p. 36.
48.
Daily Chronicle,
15 March 1898;
The Times,
8 December 1879.
49.
Duke of Portland,
op. cit.,
p. 34.
50.
Augustus Hare,
In My Solitary Life,
p. 178.
51.
Theodore Besterman,
The Druce-Portland Case,
pp. 78-9, 204,
216, 272.
52.
ibid.,
133. 53.
ibid.,
100. 54.
ibid.,
268.
55.
Chips Channon,
Diaries,
p. 468.Duke of Bedford,
A Silver-plated Spoon,
p. 119.
Duke of Beaufort
"I say that if these Bills are passed and the sound of the horn and the cry of the hounds are not again to be heard, it will be the worst thing ever to happen in this country." So spoke the distinctive hyperbolic voice of Sir Henry FitzRoy Somerset, ioth Duke of Beaufort,
k.g.,
p.c., G.C.V.O
., Master of the Queen's Horse, and the greatest fox- hunter of the twentieth century.
Foxhunting is not to the dukes of Beaufort a hobby, a pastime, a sport; it is a way of life, it is the very colour and sound of life itself. For more than 200 years successive dukes of Beaufort have hunted six days a week during the season. They have established the hunt which bears their name, the Beaufort Hunt, as the best, with the best pack of hounds in the world. It is an achievement of which they can with just cause be proud, an achievement symbolised by the registration number on the late Duke's car - MFH 1; he was beyond question the foremost Master of Fox Hounds in the country. In Gloucestershire, where his estate, Badminton, dominates the surrounding country, the Duke was known to everyone, family, friends, tenants, and strangers, not as "Your Grace" or "Duke", but as "Master". Even Queen Mary would call him nothing else. So one can well understand that the sound of the horn was music to his ears, and the excitement of the chase food for his blood; a life without foxhunting would not have been an unimaginable catastrophe to him; it did not bear contemplation.
The Duke of Beaufort was known also to the public as a close friend of the Royal Family. The Queen and other members of the Royal Family habitually stay at Badminton for the world-famous three-day event, the Badminton Horse Trials, initiated by the late Duke in 1949, and since risen to become the most highly esteemed horse event of the calendar. The Queen is known to have said that she is never happier than when she can stay at Badminton, and Queen Mary stayed there for the whole of World War II, descending upon the house in full convoy in 1939, and living there for the next five years. Queen Mary was the Duchess of Beaufort's aunt who was therefore descended directly from George III, and a member of the "old" Royal Family, as opposed to the "new" Royal Family represented by Queen Victoria, from whom Elizabeth II is descended.
Byt Beaufort's connection with royalty goes back much farther than that, as he represents the only direct Plantagenet line left today, though from illegitimate stock. (The last legitimate Plantagenet was the Earl of Warwick who was executed in 1499.) The Duke's ancestor is John of Gaunt, son of King Edward III, the same John of Gaunt to whom Shakespeare gave one of his most rousing patriotic orations, in
Richard II.
2
What Shakespeare's play does not tell us is that John of Gaunt had four illegitimate children by Katherine Swynford, his mistress for twenty years, and to all four he gave the surname "Beaufort", after a castle which his family had owned in the Champagne region of France for generations. One of these, John Beaufort, born in 1372 or 1373, is the founder of the Beaufort family we know. By the time he was twenty-four years old, his father had finally taken Katherine Swynford as his third wife, and in 1396 Pope Boniface IX ratified the marriage retroactively, in order to legitimise the offspring. Parliament assented to the legitimising of the four Beaufort children on the strict condition that none of them or their descendants should ever lay claim to the throne; they were, of course, perilously close to it. The usurper King Henry IV (Bolingbroke), another son of John of Gaunt, was their half-brother. With this parliamentary caution in mind one writer has pointed out the irony that obtained in 1914, when all the crowned heads in Europe, with the exception of the King of Spain, were descended from John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford.
3
John Beaufort was soon afterwards created Earl of Somerset, in which title he was succeeded by his brother Henry, who died at seventeen. A third brother assumed the mantle, and was advanced to the rank of Duke of Somerset in 1443, with precedence above the Duke of Norfolk (of the Mowbray family; the first Howard Duke of Norfolk was not for another forty years).
That a man with the surname of Somerset and the title of Beaufort may be descended from men with the surname of Beaufort and the title of Somerset obviously requires explanation, especially since the dukedom of Somerset is now held by a man with the surname of Seymour, who is no relation whatever to the present David Somerset, Duke of Beaufort. The answer lies in another illegitimacy and yet another invented surname.
The third Duke of Somerset, grandson of John of Gaunt, was attainted and beheaded in 1464. That was the end of the dukedom of Somerset in the Beaufort family; the title was recreated in 1547 for Edward Seymour, and it has stayed with the Seymours ever since. Meanwhile, the last Beaufort Duke of Somerset had fathered a bastard son called Charles, who adopted his father's title as a surname, and is therefore the founder of the Somerset family; when his uncle Edmund Beaufort died in 1471 the Beaufort family as such was extinct, and the new Somerset family began. Charles Somerset was a 2nd cousin of Henry VII, which may account for his being advanced in rank, in spite of his bastardy, to the title of Earl of Worcester. He married Elizabeth Herbert, daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon, by which he acquired Raglan Castle in Monmouthshire, still in the possession of his descendants.
The 3rd Earl of Worcester, William Somerset, played a key role in events which form the substance of another chapter, for he was present at the trials of both Protector Somerset and the 4th Duke of Norfolk, those implacable rivals, and one of the small ironies which delight the amateur historian is that he was the first peer to cast his vote in 1551 for the condemnation of the Protector, who had usurped a title which had previously belonged to his family. He also founded the family tradition of unswerving loyalty to the Crown, which has been observed with more or less fidelity by his descendants. He had his own company of actors, but there is no evidence that this taste has been inherited by subsequent generations. (The late Duke of Beaufort celebrated his fortieth wedding anniversary in 1964 by taking a coach-load to a Whitehall farce.)
The 4th Earl of Worcester (1553-1628), Edward Somerset, consolidated the tradition of loyalty to the Crown with astonishing success. Though a Catholic, he was an especial favourite with Elizabeth I, who trusted him above many others, and with James I and Charles I. His other contribution to family traditions was his love for horses. He was the best horseman and tilter of his generation,
4
and his supremacy was recognised by the Queen when she made him Master of the Horse, a post previously held by her two loves, Lord Leicester and Lord Essex. The Master of the Horse is one of the oldest offices under the Crown, and its holder is required to ride in attendance at every state procession. He is in charge of the royal stables and kennels, and has the privilege of borrowing any of the monarch's horses, grooms, or footmen, at his desire. The late Duke of Beaufort, like his ancestor 400 years ago, was Master of the Horse, and no more appropriate person could there have been for this office. It was his love for horses that endeared Worcester to the new King, James I, who loved hunting, and who took Worcester with him on his expeditions. The King's reward for his companionship was to grant him in 1607 ferry rights over the River Severn from Aust to Chepstow, a right still possessed by his descendant. Until 1964, the Duke leased this right to a ferry company, for a handsome fee. There was some fuss about compensation to the Duke when the Severn Bridge was opened, making his ferry rights obsolete, which is worth mentioning only to correct a misapprehension held at the time. Leo Abse,
m.p.,
objected to the principle of paying any compensation, on the grounds that "the country paid a heavy enough price at the time to James I for the favours he lavished on a series of handsome male favourites".
5
This, of course, is crass nonsense. Worcester was no "handsome male favourite". He was fifty years old when James came to the throne, and the king a mere twenty-seven. It is hardly likely that he took a fancy to old Worcester. Their relationship was professional and friendly; Worcester acted as the King's private secretary, and hunted with him regularly. The famous lovers, Robert Carr and George Villiers, came later.
The Earl was in favour with Charles I, who pushed him a step further up the ladder by making him Marquess of Worcester for having contributed a considerable sum of money to the royal purse. With his son, Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester (1601- 1667), the dukedoms of Somerset and Beaufort collide for the last time, to be sorted out and sent their separate ways once and for all.
In 1644 Charles I sent to Worcester a remarkable document purporting to create him Duke of Somerset (the title had lain in abeyance since the death of Protector Somerset), with power to create his own peerages, from a baronet to a marquess, and confer them upon persons of his choice. He was to be Generalissimo of three armies, and Admiral of the Fleet at sea, and he was promised the hand of the King's daughter in marriage. The full text of this document, now at Badminton, can be read in Collins's
Peerage of England,
Vol. I, pages 206-7. It is now recognised to be a forgery, but in the seventeenth century it was taken seriously enough for a Committee of the House of Lords to be convened to consider the matter. In 1660 both Edward Somerset and William Seymour laid claim to the dukedom of Somerset, held by ancestors of them both at different times. Edward Somerset's claim was based on this irregular patent, which had never received the seal, and was little more than a private promise of the King's which was never ratified. The House of Lords decided against Edward Somerset for this reason, and also because he was a Papist, and obnoxious to the people by virtue of that alone. It was concluded that a far better claim to the title was possessed by William Seymour, who was thereupon recognised as 2nd Duke of Somerset, while Edward Somerset, Marquess of Worcester, withdrew his claim. Twenty-two years later, his son would be created Duke of Beaufort, and the dispute would not again be revived.
Before we leave the Marquess, mention must be made of his book
A Century of Inventions,
at one time highly regarded, in which he tells of scores of machines he has constructed to perform impossible tasks, while neglecting to tell us how to construct the machines. One invention, the "hydraulic machine", was the subject of much speculation; it has often been claimed that Worcester anticipated the steam-engine with this machine by a couple of centuries, but this claim is not entertained by those who should know.
The man who was to become the 1st Duke of Beaufort, taking his title from the surname his forbears had carried, was Henry Somerset (1629-1700). It is to him that the family owes Badminton, which he inherited from his first cousin Elizabeth, grand-daughter of that 4th Earl of Worcester who had been the best horseman of his day, and who had bought Badminton from the Boteler family in 11608. The dukedom was created in 1682 "in consideration of noble descent from Edward III through John de Beaufort, son of John of Gaunt", conveniently ignoring the two illegitimacies on the way. The 1st Duke was a splendid man, and a circumspect diplomatist. He managed prudently to survive the Cromwellian period with honour, a period during which, under Cromwell's influence, he dropped his courtesy title and was known as plain Mister. The two men achieved some degree of compromise. In 1660, however, he was one of the twelve commoners deputed to invite Charles II to return to the throne, and thereafter Beaufort's loyalty to the legitimate crown was firm. He was the first of the family to plunge headlong into Tory principles so solid as to make it impossible for himself and all the dukes who followed him to think clearly about any alternative point of view. Mercifully, their Toryism has never collapsed into fantasy, as with the 4th Duke of Newcastle for example, but it has been rigid. The 1st Duke supported James II against the Monmouth rebellion in 1685, and was one of the two chief mourners at Charles II's funeral (along with, oddly enough, the Duke of Somerset). He then was consistently loyal to James II, opposing the faction which wanted to force abdication. He voted for a regency rather than for offering the crown to William of Orange, which he thought un-English. This did not go unnoticed by William who, once on the throne, received him coldly and kept him waiting an hour in an ante-room. Beaufort was unperturbed. He simply refused to give his oath of allegiance to King William, who in
his
view had no right to the throne of England. Later, the Duke and the King seem to have come to an understanding, though it is recorded that on one occasion when the King was a house-guest at Badminton, the domestic chaplain toasted the health of the King omitting to mention which one.
7
Politically the Duke of Beaufort was the very opposite of the Cavendishes, the Russells, and the Manners, all of whom founded ducal families. He was the highest of high Tories, and his political predilection seems to have been absorbed in the genes of the family, for all the Dukes of Beaufort have been uncompromising Tories from childhood to the grave. It is a natural consequence of their being country-bred foxhunters, and an inheritance from their Jacobite forefathers. The 2nd Duke is said to have been so Tory that he refused to have anything to do with the Court until 1710, when the Tories were returned to power, at which point he loftily announced to the Queen that he could now call her Queen "in reality".
8
From this point on, the Dukes of Beaufort retired to the country and their hounds, steering clear of politics and the metropolis, which they considered irretrievably stained by the corruption of Whiggery and radicalism. They sought no power, no place in history. It was as if they considered political life beneath their level, too sordid to warrant their interest. A typical political comment is that of the 9th Duke, grandfather to the present Duke, who said he wished to see Winston Churchill torn to pieces by his hounds.
9
Divorced from the mainstream of events, denying themselves the stimulation of town life, their intellectual development was stifled, and they inevitably became stuffy, puritanical, dull. Writing in 1787, Walpole said that "there never was a Duke of Beaufort that made it worth knowing which Duke it was",
10
and Lady Granville in the next century found life at Badminton intolerably boring. "So
borne
a set of minds I never met with", she wrote, "all the
elans
are kept for the hedges and ditches."
11
Examples of wit are as rare at Badminton as a Marxist tract. One joke has been recorded, attributed to Lord Charles Somerset (1767-1831), Governor of the Cape of Good Hope. He told a story about the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, who went round the world with Captain Cook. Banks was being polite to an Irish merchant seaman, asking him where he had served. "In the East, sir." "Then doubtless, sir, you must have seen a variety of very curious objects," said Banks. "Pray do allow me to ask you if you ever happened to see a black cockatoo ?" "A black cockatoo, no Sir Joseph, I never happened to see a black cockatoo," said the seaman, "but I'll tell you what, Sir Joseph, I have very frequently seen, a black cock or two."
12