Vienna. He was also Governor of Guernsey, High Steward of Salisbury, and a Knight of the Garter, besides the almost hereditary office of Lord-Lieutenant of Wiltshire. He was appointed Vice-Chamberlain of the Household in 1784 under Pitt's Ministry, and retained this office till 1794. While Lord Herbert he had served in the war of the French Revolution, being in command of the English force attached to the Prussian army on the French frontier. He greatly improved the rent-roll of his estates, which at his accession to the title were estimated at £35,000 ayear, but at his death, October 26, 1827, having laid out £200,000 on them, they were estimated at nearly treble that sum. He was twice married, first to a daughter of Topham Beauclerk, and, secondly, to Catherine, daughter of Count Woronzow, Russian Ambassador in this country. By the first marriage he had one son, Robert Henry, who succeeded as twelfth Earl of Pembroke and ninth Earl of Montgomery, and to whom he left a legacy of £10,000. The bulk of his very large disposable property Earl George bequeathed to his son Sidney by his second marriage, well known as the late Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, and created Lord Herbert of Lea the 15th of January 1861. The twelfth Earl, who resided at Paris, leaving Wilton to the occupation of his brother, died April 25, 1862, and was succeeded by his nephew, George Robert Charles, thirteenth and present Earl of Pembroke and tenth Earl of Montgomery, son of Sidney, Lord Herbert of Lea (who died 2d August 1861), a lad of fourteen years of age, who, if he reaches man's estate, will in 1871 find himself one of the very greatest of English nobles.

It is useless to give any general character of the Herberts, for they have been rather a clan than a family, and have presented almost every variety of individual type. In most of them who have risen to personal greatness the trace of the old Celtic blood may be perceived, the courage and the choler, the tendency towards luxury and the fondness for art which mark that branch of the human family; but there have been men among them, like Lord Herbert of Lea, of a very much higher type. Though good soldiers and gallant sailors, they have, on the whole, done less for England than most of her older houses, and their great position is due more to the singular hold they once possessed over the affections of Welshmen, and an hereditary keenness of intellect, than to their great achievements.

The Somersets.

HE Duke of Beaufort, the head of this splendid clan, whose name has for four centuries been synonymous with aristocracy, is the lineal representative of a branch of the Plantagenets, a branch which is in England termed "baseborn," but in many countries would be only a branche cadette. He is the lineal male descendant of John, Duke of Lancaster-Shakespeare's "old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster"-and the heir of a house which, though the great Peer who is the stem of all English royalty only subsequently married its ancestress, was once legitimatised in the fullest manner by Act of Parliament, and only lost that position through a second taint of illegitimacy.

In other words, the Somersets are the descendants of Charles Somerset, illegitimate son of Henry Beaufort so called from a castle in Anjou - Duke of Somerset, grandson of John Beaufort, eldest illegitimate son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, by Catherine Swinford. Henry Beaufort was first cousin to Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII., so that Charles Somerset and the first of the Tudor Princes stood in the relation of second cousins. The

Beauforts had been legitimatised in the 15th of Richard II., and it would seem that this legitimatisation extended originally to the succession to the Crown, for the words in the Patent Roll, "exceptâ dignitate regali," are an interlineation, probably inserted at the time that Henry IV. "exemplified" the grant in 1407, in which exemplification these words appear. The Beauforts had devoted their fortunes and lives to the Lancastrian cause, one Duke having fallen in battle and two on the scaffold, independently of other members of the family, during the course of the Wars of the Roses. Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was taken prisoner at the battle of Hexham, and executed April 3, 1463, leaving issue by Joan Hill

"de la Montaign" an only natural son, CHARLES, who assumed the surname of SOMERSET. The Tudor dynasty took good care of the fortunes of their "baseborn" cousin. In 1485 he was made a Privy Councillor, and was a Knight in the 2d of Henry VII., in which year he was made Constable of Helmsley Castle, in Yorkshire, and in the next year Admiral of the Fleet. In the 6th year of the reign he was sent with the Order of the Garter to the Emperor Maximilian. He was also himself made a Knight of the Garter and a Banneret, and Captain of the Guard July 17, 1496. In the 17th of Henry VII. he was sent Ambassador to the Emperor, and concluded two treaties, June 19 and June 20, 1502. He next made a great match with Elizabeth Herbert, daughter and heiress of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Huntingdon, thus obtaining Ragland Castle and the largest part of the older Herbert inheritance. On this marriage he was created by patent of November 26, 1506, Baron Her

bert of Ragland, Chepstow, and Gower, and became as such Governor of Payne and Montgomery Castles. He was Lord Chamberlain to Henry VII., and continued in the same office by Henry VIII., who made him also one of his Privy Council. In 1513 he accompanied the latter King to France, and was present at the taking of Terouenne and Tournay, was created Lord Chamberlain for life, and on the 1st of February, 1514, Earl of Worcester. He conducted the Princess Mary to France on her marriage with King Louis, was employed in negotiating the peace with that country, and in 1521 a peace between France and the Emperor Charles V. He also sat on the trial of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. He died April 15, 1526. He was twice married after the death of his first wife, and was succeeded by Henry, his son by his first marriage, and second Earl of Worcester. The second Earl played no conspicuous part in history, and died November 26, 1549. The inquisition taken in Gloucestershire after his death shows that he died seised of the manors of Wolveston alias Woollaston, and grange of Woollaston, Modesgate, alias Maiolt, Brockwere, Alveston, Halleshall, and Hewelsfield, and 82 messuages, 3 mills, 1000 acres of ploughed land, 70 of meadow, 1000 of pasture, 600 of wood, 500 of heath and turf, and £20, 8s. rent in Brockwere, Wolveston, Almington, Alveston, Hewelsfield, and Modesgate, with the fisheries in the Wye called Plomwere, Ashwere, Ithelswere, and Walwere, the rectory of Walwere, and advowsons and vicarage of the same, the manor of Tiddenham, and divers messuages, lands, and tenements in Strote, Widden, Bisten, Bottesley, and Sudbury, all in the county of Gloucester. He was succeeded by his eldest