SOMERSET, Henry (c.1577-1646)

The second son of Edward Somerset^*, 4th earl of Worcester, Somerset was raised a Protestant, but converted to Catholicism, possibly during the continental travels which followed his studies at Oxford. With his elder brother’s death around the start of 1598, he became his father’s heir, and assumed the courtesy title Lord Herbert. As such, he needs to be distinguished from William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke, who was similarly styled until January 1601.22 Ath. Ox. iii. 200; T. Bayley, Worcesters Apophthegmes (1650), 112. During the next few years, Herbert began to take his place in local government, and also spent time at court, where his father was master of the horse to Elizabeth I. In 1600 he married Anne Russell, one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, Elizabeth herself attending the wedding. Anne was a granddaughter and heiress of Francis Russell^†, 2nd earl of Bedford, and through this marriage Herbert acquired the bulk of the Russell estates in Middlesex, including Bedford House, a grand mansion on The Strand known subsequently as Worcester House. However, the union also drew Herbert into a protracted dispute with Anne’s cousin, the childless and impecunious Edward Russell^*, 3rd earl of Bedford, over the latter’s plans to sell property to which Anne held the reversion.23 Letters and Memorials of State, ii. 152, 203; C142/211/183; HMC Hatfield, xi. 343, 562-3; CPR, 1600-1 ed. S.R. Neal and C. Leighton (L. and I. Soc. cccxxxix), 42-3.

Even at this stage of his career, Herbert seems to have preferred life at his family’s ancestral seat, Raglan Castle, where his eldest son Edward (Somerset^*, later 2nd marquess of Worcester) was born in early 1603. However, he maintained contact with the court through another leading figure there, Anne’s kinsman Robert Cecil^* (later 1st earl of Salisbury), who became the child’s godfather. When the queen died in March 1603, Herbert carried a banner in her funeral procession.24 HMC Hatfield, xii. 667; HMC Var. iv. 164.

Following James I’s accession, the earl of Worcester retained the mastership of the horse. The king’s favour also extended to Herbert, who was promoted in July 1603 to the oyer and terminer commission covering Monmouthshire. Moreover, when the first Jacobean Parliament assembled in the following year, Herbert was summoned to the Lords in his father’s barony.25 47th DKR, app. p. 99. He attended almost three-quarters of the 1604 session, absenting himself every few days, usually for just one sitting. In all he attracted nine nominations, including two appointments to committees for conferring with the Commons about the proposed Anglo-Scottish Union. He was also named to a conference about the controversial book on this topic by John Thornborough^*, bishop of Bristol.26 LJ, ii. 277b, 284a, 309a. Assuming that he was by now a recusant, Herbert will have had mixed feelings about being named to committees for the bill to enforce anti-Catholic laws.27 Ibid. 314a, 324a.

Herbert’s younger brother, Thomas Somerset^‡, had become Anne of Denmark’s master of the horse in 1603, undoubtedly through their father’s influence. Herbert himself probably served Prince Henry, for he was staying at St James’s Palace in March 1605, when he interceded with the Admiralty Court on behalf of a Monmouthshire man accused of piracy.28 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. ed. E. Lodge, iii. 65; Add. 12506, f. 317. When Parliament resumed that autumn, Herbert attended the Lords for two of the three November sittings, but his absences were more frequent and prolonged thereafter, and in total he missed almost half of the 1605-6 session. Despite this, he received 16 nominations, including two to confer with the Commons about ecclesiastical grievances and the Union. His other appointments were all legislative. Of these, Herbert will certainly have taken an interest in the bill to rebuild the bridge at Chepstow, in Monmouthshire, where his family owned the lordship. He also must have been concerned at the bill to prevent the construction of weirs on navigable rivers, as it threatened a crown grant held by his father. Indeed, he probably helped to kill the measure in committee. Other issues which he was named to consider and which may have attracted his attention were overcrowding in the London suburbs, the Welsh cloth trade, and the Gloucestershire estates of William Throckmorton and Gray Brydges^*, 5th Lord Chandos.29 LJ, ii. 386a, 389a, 408b, 410a, 411a, 413a, 421a, 433b; Bowyer Diary, 116-17.

Herbert’s attendance in the Lords declined yet further during the 1606-7 session. Although he missed only four sittings in the run-up to Christmas, he was subsequently recorded at just four more in mid-February, at which point he presented his proxy to his father, having evidently obtained permission to withdraw. This lack of engagement was reflected in his tally of appointments. Prior to the Christmas recess, Herbert was nominated to two estate bill committees, one concerning Gloucestershire. His only subsequent nomination, in February 1607, was to help scrutinize the bill to require ‘more credit in wills of land’.30 LJ, ii. 449b, 454a, 468a, 470b.

Unless Herbert was experiencing prolonged ill health, the most likely explanation for his absenteeism was his family’s increasingly Catholic leanings. Although the earl of Worcester conformed to the Anglican Church, most of his children did not, and between 1606 and 1608 two of Herbert’s sisters married Catholics, Thomas Arundell^† (later 2nd Lord Arundell of Wardour) and Thomas Windsor^*, 6th Lord Windsor.31 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 201; CP, xii. pt. 2, p. 800. The sense of social isolation which would have followed from such events was made worse by a dispute with the popular and firmly Protestant earl of Pembroke. The latter was governor of the Company of Mineral and Battery Works, which constructed ironworks on land belonging to Herbert’s father without the latter’s permission. Despite Herbert’s own efforts to negotiate a settlement, the case eventually reached the Privy Council, and generated considerable ill-feeling at court between the two families.32 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 378; HMC Hatfield, xx. 298; Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 207.

Herbert attended the opening weeks of the first parliamentary session of 1610, but after Easter his presence was recorded just once more, on 30 April. He may also have attended Prince Henry’s creation as prince of Wales in June, though most records of this event do not mention him.33 J. Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, ii. 333. During this session Herbert received four nominations. Appointed on 14 Feb. to confer with the Commons about the Great Contract, he would have been entitled to attend subsequent conferences on the same topic which employed the same personnel. He was also nominated to a conference about Dr Cowell’s controversial book, The Interpreter. His two bill committees were concerned with some Berkshire estates and charitable provisions in Dorset.34 LJ, ii. 550b, 557b, 563b, 570b. Herbert’s parliamentary career effectively ended at this point. No doubt keen to avoid taking the oath of allegiance now expected of all peers who attended Parliament, he absented himself from the second 1610 session, handing his proxy to his father. He never sat in the Lords again.35 Ibid. 666a.

During the following decade the earl of Worcester remained a significant figure at court, but Herbert retreated into obscurity, named occasionally to minor commissions in Monmouthshire or Glamorgan, but otherwise living very much in his father’s shadow. He devoted some time to commercial activities. Around 1614, he built a merchant ship at Chepstow, and apparently recovered his investment transporting local produce to Spain. He also emulated the earl of Pembroke, establishing ironworks in Monmouthshire, though the scale of this enterprise is unclear.36 G.D. Owen, Wales in the Reign of Jas. I, 134; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 32; L. Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 347. As a token gesture towards religious conformity, Herbert employed several Anglican chaplains, but he also sent his sons abroad for extended periods, so that they could practise their Catholic faith more freely.37 C58/17 (22 June, 8 Nov. and 1 Dec. 1613); APC, 1619-21, pp. 23, 169; SO3/7, unfol. (Nov. 1622). Although invited in 1620 to contribute towards the benevolence raised to assist the Protestant defence of the Palatinate, he seems not to have done so, though he could legitimately have claimed that he was still financially dependent on his father, who did donate.38 APC, 1619-21, p. 283; SP14/117/97.

When the 1614 Parliament met, Herbert as usual handed his proxy to his father. He also obtained leave of absence in 1621, though on this occasion he awarded his proxy to the king’s cousin, Ludovic Stuart^*, earl (later duke) of Richmond, a peer with whom he had no obvious connection.39 LJ, ii. 686b; iii. 4a, 14b, 165b. A record indicating that he attended the Lords on 8 Apr. 1614 is evidently a clerical error: ibid. ii. 689a. Herbert briefly seemed destined for greater things when the protracted negotiations for Prince Charles to marry a Spanish princess came close to fruition in early 1623. One of the key conditions for the match was broader toleration of English recusants, and in Catholic circles at least Herbert was seen as a suitable figure to represent their interests on the Privy Council.40 Stuart Dynastic Policy and Religious Pols. 1621-5 ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxiv), 155. In the event, the marriage discussions fell through, and the 1624 Parliament was summoned in order to secure taxation for an anti-Habsburg war. In that context English Catholics were seen as a security threat, and the absent Herbert was presented by the Commons as a recusant office-holder in Monmouthshire, known ‘to favour the popish religion, and to forbear the Church’. On this occasion he initially presented his proxy to Richmond, but when the latter died suddenly just before the Parliament opened, he transferred it to his father.41 LJ, iii. 205b, 394b; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 85v; Add. 40087, f. 3.

The accession of Charles I in 1625, and the intensifying war with Spain, placed even more pressure on domestic Catholics. Herbert apparently supplied a proxy for the first Caroline Parliament, but the recipient was not recorded.42 Procs. 1625, p. 47. In October that year, the Privy Council ordered the disarming of Catholic peers. Herbert responded indignantly to this questioning of his secular allegiance, while asserting that he possessed no weapons anyway; as he still lived at Raglan, his father’s house, he was not personally liable to supply arms for the militia, while those which he acquired for his merchant venture had been captured by pirates. Nevertheless, he was removed from the Monmouthshire bench shortly afterwards, and also taken off the local oyer and terminer commission.43 APC, 1625-6, pp. 228-9; CSP Dom. 1625-6, pp. 151, 176.

From this low point, Herbert’s position gradually recovered thanks to a sustained display of loyalty to the crown. During the 1626 Parliament, he diplomatically handed his proxy to the solidly Anglican earl of Pembroke, possibly unaware that the latter would use this session to attack the royal favourite, George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham.44 SO3/8, unfol. (4 Feb. 1626); Procs. 1626, iv. 11. When the earl of Worcester headed for London to attend the Lords, Herbert stayed behind, using his family’s local prestige to ensure that the Monmouthshire magistrates completed their certificate of suitable recipients of privy seal loans, the government’s financial expedient to compensate for the inadequate supply voted by the 1625 Parliament.45 CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 253. He was similarly supportive of the next major round of arbitrary taxation, the Forced Loan of 1626-7. Thanks to Herbert’s pressure, Monmouthshire was the first Welsh county to complete its collection, generating more than 80 per cent of its target sum. Herbert himself contributed £66, while he and his father helped the process along by persuading the government in February 1627 to repay outstanding coat-and-conduct money to the shire.46 Ibid. 509; APC, 1627, pp. 65, 127-8; L. Bowen, Pols. of the Principality: Wales, c.1603-42, pp. 131-2. His personal reward came in the form of a return to public office. With his father’s health now failing, in December 1626 Herbert was joined with Worcester in the lieutenancy of Monmouthshire and Glamorgan, effectively a reversal of the crown’s decision just 12 months earlier to confiscate his weapons. He threw himself vigorously into his new role, submitting recommendations for enhancing the militia’s performance in Wales as a whole. However, this promising start was somewhat undermined in July 1627, when one of his younger sons, Charles Somerset, was apprehended in the English Channel travelling with forged papers, accompanied by a Jesuit, and allegedly on his way to a Catholic college on the Continent. The boy was detained for three months while the Privy Council investigated, and Herbert’s loyalty must once again have been called into question.47 CSP Dom. 1627-8, pp. 253, 258, 495; CSP Ven. 1626-8, p. 307; APC, 1627-8, p. 77.

Herbert succeeded his father as 5th earl of Worcester two weeks before the opening of the 1628 parliamentary session. Despite his newly elevated rank, he yet again absented himself from the Lords, his proxy this time going to Pembroke’s brother, Philip Herbert^*, earl of Montgomery (later 4th earl of Pembroke). In June he was again presented in the Commons as a recusant officeholder, ‘disaffected in religion’.48 CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 15; Lords Procs. 1628, p. 27; CD 1628, iv. 319, 323. The crown’s attitude to his Catholicism was more measured. On the one hand, Worcester was confirmed as sole lord lieutenant of Monmouthshire and Glamorgan, a role which he continued to exercise energetically. Indeed, in November 1628 the king pointedly refused to sack him during a clear-out of other recusant officials. On the other hand, Charles declined to reinstate him as a j.p., and around this time also barred him on religious grounds from purchasing the wardship of his distant kinsman and fellow Catholic, Christopher Roper^†, 4th Lord Teynham.49 CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 315, 420; 1637, p. 71; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 439.

For the 1629 session of Parliament, Worcester once again consigned his proxy to Montgomery.50 LJ, iv. 3a, 25b. In the following May the king reviewed his decision on the lieutenancy, restoring the traditional arrangement whereby Worcester’s two counties were placed under the control of the lord president of Wales, which office was then held by William Compton^*, 1st earl of Northampton. Charles insisted that this was purely an administrative reform, not a slight to Worcester himself. In return for his voluntary resignation, Worcester was permitted to continue nominating the local deputy lieutenants and magistrates.51 Sainty, 21; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 8-9. Even so, the loss of his final significant post was undoubtedly a major blow, leaving Worcester open to the derisive nickname, ‘Jack out of office’. Thereafter, he became a rare sight at court. In 1631 he served as a commissioner for the trial of a fellow Catholic, Mervyn Tuchet^*, 12th Lord Audley (and 2nd earl of Castlehaven [I]), on charges of sodomy, but only because a number of other peers were unavailable. Three years later, he participated in the Garter procession from London to Windsor.52 CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 19; 1636-7, p. 177; Strafforde Letters (1739) ed. W. Knowler, i. 242. In general, though, he preferred the seclusion of Raglan, where he lived in considerable state, bolstering his reputation within Monmouthshire through his hospitality and benevolent management of his estates.53 Ath. Ox. iii. 200; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 5-6. Those few privileges which he still retained, he guarded jealously. In 1629-30, he stubbornly refused to relinquish his claim to a ship impounded in Glamorgan, obstructing the jurisdiction of the vice admiralty of South Wales for at least 15 months.54 CSP Dom. 1629-31, pp. 52, 65, 106, 398, 407-8, 412; APC, 1629-30, p. 141. When, in 1635, Northampton’s successor as lord president, John Egerton^*, 1st earl of Bridgwater, attempted to impose his own nominees as deputy lieutenants in Monmouthshire and Glamorgan, Worcester immediately appealed to the king. The earl’s son Edward, now Lord Herbert, who attended court more frequently, reminded Charles of Worcester’s ‘extraordinary’ services in support of arbitrary taxation, and the disgrace which he had suffered through the loss of his lieutenancy. The king duly reaffirmed the earl’s residual privileges in this area, though the 1629 administrative restructuring was also upheld.55 HMC 12th Rep. IX, 8-9; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 177. The account of this episode in R. Cust, Chas. I and the Aristocracy, 1625-42, p. 86, fails to mention that the king restored an existing arrangement. The monarch’s caution was probably wise; a Catholic commentator in 1632 described Worcester as ‘wholly and blindly led by the Jesuits’, a verdict supported by the earl’s decision the previous year to support a Jesuit-inspired attack on the Catholic bishop in charge of England’s secular priests.56 Newsletters from the Caroline Ct. 1631-8 ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxvi), 81, 121-2; M.C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern Eng. 475. Indeed, while the king remained essentially tolerant of Worcester’s religious preferences, protecting him at intervals during this decade from prosecution for recusancy, the earl remained debarred from holding weapons until the spring of 1639, when he was summoned to attend Charles at York, ahead of the First Bishops’ War. He declined to come, asserting that he was too old and sick to travel, was ‘wholly out of his element in military affairs’, and was in any case prohibited from keeping arms. The king promptly lifted this ban, then left the earl in peace.57 CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 145; 1638-9, pp. 456-7; 1639-40, p. 215; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 10.

Worcester failed to attend either the Short or Long parliaments. However, in July 1640, amid the preparations for the Second Bishops’ War, he was commissioned to levy soldiers across the southern sector of Wales and the Marches. The lord deputy of Ireland, Thomas Wentworth^*, 1st earl of Strafford, was proposing to bring across a substantially Catholic army to fight the Scots. With South Wales one of the obvious landing points, it seemed sensible to place Worcester, with his solidly recusant credentials, in a position of command in this region. Nevertheless, the issue of Irish reinforcements was highly sensitive, and the precise scope and purpose of Worcester’s commission was not made public. Consequently, when Strafford’s plan was twisted during his 1641 impeachment trial into a plot against Parliament, Worcester was assumed to be party to the alleged conspiracy, and was thereafter viewed by the Commons as extremely dangerous.58 SP16/460/23; Procs. LP, i. 99, 103; ii. 309-10, 418-19; iii. 459. During the Civil War, the earl proved to be a staunch royalist, he and his son Lord Herbert rallying support for Charles in the Welsh Marches, and contributing at least £98,000 to the king’s war chest. In 1643 Worcester’s earldom was elevated to a marquessate as a reward.59 R. Hutton, Roy. War Effort 1642-6, p. 54; J. Rushworth, Historical Collections, v. 263; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 17-18; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 434. As Parliament gained the upper hand, Worcester shut himself away at Raglan, presumably aware that he stood no chance of being pardoned. When the castle finally surrendered in August 1646, one of the last royalist strongholds to capitulate, the marquess was taken to London and imprisoned while Parliament pondered his fate.60 CJ, iii. 687a; iv. 651a; Rushworth, vi. 294-5; Hutton, 200; In the event, he died of natural causes in the following December, and was buried at Windsor. The marquessate of Worcester descended to his son Edward.61 HMC 6th Rep. 145; Diary of Walter Powell, 34; CP, xii. pt. 2, p. 859.