Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/583



HEN a commission was sent by the Parliament to search Raglan Castle for arms, a jet of water was sent pouring over them in a way to them extraordinary. It was from a steam-propelled fountain, invented and executed by Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, the son of the Marquess of Worcester. In 1646 the castle stood a siege from the Parliamentarians, under Sir Trevor Williams and Colonel Morgan, and finally under Sir Thomas Fairfax. It surrendered on 17 August. No sooner was the castle abandoned than the lead and timber of the roofs were carried off for the rebuilding of Bristol Bridge, and the peasantry of the neighbourhood began to dig in the moats, drain the fish-ponds, and tear down the walls in quest of treasures supposed to be concealed there, and to rip up pipes, and pull to pieces lead and iron work to appropriate the metal. Then it was that Lord Herbert's steam fountain was destroyed.

The old Marquess died in December of the same year, and Edward Somerset became second Marquess of Worcester. Whilst in the Tower, in 1652-4, the Marquess wrote his Century of the Names and Scantlings of Inventions, but it was not published till 1663. "He was a man," says Clarendon, "of a fair and gentle carriage towards all men (as in truth he was