Henry Somerset
Duke of Beaufort
Henry Adelbert Wellington FitzRoy Somerset, 9th Duke of Beaufort (19 May 1847 – 24 November 1924), styled the Earl of Glamorgan until 1853 and Marquess of Worcester between 1853 and 1899, was a British peer. Beaufort was born in Berkeley Square, London, the first surviving son and heir of Charles, Somerset, Marquess of Worcester and his wife, the Marchioness of Worcester (born Lady Georgiana Charlotte Curzon, daughter of Richard Curzon-Howe, 1st Earl Howe. He was named after his godparents, his grandfather Henry, 7th Duke of Beaufort; Adelaide, Dowager Queen of the United Kingdom; and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. In 1853, his father succeeded as the 8th Duke of Beaufort, at which point he was styled as the Marquess of Worcester. He was educated at Eton College between 1860 and 1864. Beaufort became a cornet in 1865 in the Royal Horse Guards and was promoted to captain in 1869. He was aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria in 1899 and served as High Steward of Bristol in 1899. On 8 January 1900 he was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Brecknockshire. He was Hereditary Keeper of Raglan Castle. He was appointed the Honorary Colonel of the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars. He was a Justice of the Peace for Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire and a Deputy Lieutenant of Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire. Beaufort married Louise Emily Harford (1864–1945), widow of a Dutch nobleman (Baron Charles Frederic van Tuyll van Serooskerken, 1859–1893, leaving two sons), on 9 October 1895. They had three children.
The Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) is a regiment in the British Army. Incorporated by royal charter in 1537 by King Henry VIII, it is the oldest regiment in the British Army and is considered the second-oldest military unit in the world. The HAC can trace its history back as far as 1087, but it received a royal charter from Henry VIII on 25 August 1537, when Letters Patent were received by the Overseers of the Fraternity or Guild of St George authorising them to establish a perpetual corporation for the defence of the realm to be known as the Fraternity or Guild of Artillery of Longbows, Crossbows and Handgonnes. This body was known by a variety of names until 1658, when it was first referred to as the Artillery Company. It was initially referred to as the Honourable Artillery Company in 1685 and officially received the name from Queen Victoria in 1860. However, the Archers' Company of the Honourable Artillery Company was retained into the late 19th century, though as a private club. Founded in 1781 by Sir Ashton Lever, it met at Archers' Hall, Inner Circle, Regent's Park, London. The Archers' Company remained a part of the regiment operated from 1784 to the late 1790s, along with Matross, Grenadier (established on 11 August 1686) and Light Infantry companies/divisions, with a Rifle or Yager Company introduced around 1803. The regiment has the rare distinction of having fought on the side of both Parliament and the Royalists during the English Civil War 1642 to 1649. From its formation, the Company trained at a site it had occupied at the Old Artillery Ground in Spitalfields and at the Merchant Taylors' Company Hall. In
1622, the Company built its first Armoury House at the site of the Old Artillery Gardens. In 1638, Sir Maurice Abbot granted the Company use of lands at its current site south of Bunhill Fields Burial Ground on City Road, which in 1649 consisted of twelve acres enclosed by a brick wall and pale. In 1657, it sold its old Armoury House in Spitalfield to Master Gunner Richard Woolaston for £300. In 1656, the Grenadier Guards were formed from gentlemen of the Honourable Artillery Company who had taken the then heir to the throne, Prince Charles (later Charles II), to Europe for his safety during the English Civil War. On 28 October 1664, in the New Artillery Gardens, the body of men that would become the Royal Marines was first formed with an initial strength of 1,200 infantrymen recruited from the London Trained Bands as part of the mobilisation for the Second Anglo-Dutch War. James (later King James VII & II), the Duke of York and Albany, Lord High Admiral and brother of King Charles II, was Captain-General of the Honourable Artillery Company, the unit that trained the Trained Bands. The Company served in Broadgate during the Gordon Riots of 1780 and in gratitude for its role in restoring order to the city, the Corporation of London presented "two brass field-pieces", which led to the creation of an HAC Artillery Division. (These guns are on display in the entrance hall of Armoury House.) In 1860, control of the company moved from the Home Office to the War Office and in 1889, a Royal Warrant gave the Secretary of State for War control of the company's military affairs. In 1883, Queen Victoria decreed that the HAC took precedence next after the Regular Forces and therefore before the Militia and Yeomanry in consideration of its antiquity. Members of the Company first served as a formed unit overseas in the South African War (1899–1902). Almost two hundred members served; the majority in the City of London Imperial Volunteers (CIV) as infantry, mounted infantry and in a Field Battery that was officered, and for the most part manned, by members of the company.
The House of Beaufort is an English noble family which originated in the fourteenth century as the legitimated issue of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, by Katherine Swynford. Gaunt and Swynford had four children: John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset (1373–1410); Cardinal Henry Beaufort (1375–1447), Bishop of Winchester; Thomas Beaufort, 1st Duke of Exeter (1377–1426) and Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmorland (1379–1440). When Gaunt finally married Swynford as his third wife in 1396, the Beauforts were legitimized by Pope Boniface IX and by royal proclamation of the reigning monarch King Richard II the following year. John of Gaunt’s eldest legitimate son by his first wife Blanche of Lancaster was Henry Bolingbroke, who would eventually take the throne from Richard II as King Henry IV in 1399, the year of Gaunt’s death. Henry would be the first of the House of Lancaster (the main line descending from John of Gaunt) to rule England, and would eventually be succeeded by his son Henry V and grandson Henry VI. The Beauforts, as a junior branch of the House of Lancaster, would play an important role during the Wars of the Roses during the reign of the incompetent Henry VI. The eventual heiress of the
Beaufort family was Lady Margaret Beaufort, only daughter of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, who married Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond and became the mother of King Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch of England. The name Beaufort refers to the estate of Montmorency-Beaufort in Champagne, France, an ancient and seemingly important possession of the House of Lancaster. It is earliest associated with Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster (the younger son of King Henry III) whose third son John of Lancaster (1286–1317) was "Seigneur de Beaufort". The estate of Beaufort was eventually inherited, with other vast possessions, by John of Gaunt (third surviving son of King Edward III) following his marriage to the heiress Blanche of Lancaster. Duke of Beaufort is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created by Charles II in 1682 for Henry Somerset, 3rd Marquess of Worcester, a descendant of Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester, legitimised son of Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset, a Lancastrian leader in the Wars of the Roses. The name Beaufort refers to a castle in Champagne, France (now Montmorency-Beaufort). It is the only current dukedom to take its name from a place outside the British Isles. The Duke of Beaufort holds two subsidiary titles – Marquess of Worcester (created 1642) and Earl of Worcester (created 1514). The title of Marquess of Worcester is used as a courtesy title by the duke's eldest son and heir. The title of Earl of Glamorgan is used by the eldest son of the heir apparent to the dukedom. The Earl of Glamorgan's eldest son is known as Viscount Grosmont. The Earldom of Glamorgan and Viscountcy of Grosmont derive from an irregular creation in 1644 by Charles I in favour of Edward Somerset, who later succeeded his father as 2nd Marquess of Worcester.
Awards: Sash and star of the Royal Victorian Order.
