Somerset, Lord Charles
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- Somerset, Lord Charles
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(1689 - 1710), 2nd s. of M. of Worcester; Ch.Ch. Oxf.1704; unm.; d. Rome.
1709 - 10 [dep. London 27 Feb. 1708] Turin (Mar. 1709), Genoa, Milan, Bologna (Apr.), Venice (by 3 May), Padua (14 Jun.), Parma, Modena, Lucca, Florence (by Oct.), Rome (by 30 Oct. - 13 Nov. - ), Naples (by Dec. 1709 - Mar. 1710), Rome (d. 4 Mar. 1710)
Although he was a Protestant, Lord Charles Somerset's family had been well-known recusants in the Civil War and were later Jacobites. His two-year journey abroad, ending with his death in Rome, is recorded by an incomplete journal, and by his letters to his aunt, Lady Anne Coventry.1
In Turin, 'one of the prettiest towns in the world', he complained of the paper cases in the window instead of glass. Milan had too many churches, but all the blossom was out which 'makes it as sweet as if one was walking in one of the Orange houses at Badminton'. He was in Venice on 3 May 1709,2 and in Padua on 14 June.3 In Florence he saw festivities on the occasion of Cardinal de'Medici 'taking the Secular in Order to Marry the Princess of Guastallo'; he met the Grand Duke 'and after a different manner than is usual to people of my Sphere, upon account of his friendship as he told me he had with my Lord Duke when he was in England'. He also found in Florence 'not above five or six houses fit to lodge in and for eating there is no way unless one has ones own cook and provisions ... and we English made up no small part of their diversions some of them having Water Doggs and others Greyhounds, so that we had generally a Duck hunting or Coursing every day'. By now it was October and he planned to go to Rome after a bout of fever, cured by the Grand Duke's doctors, had left him 'a perfect skeleton'. He had reached Rome by 30 October 1709.
In Rome he visited the 'prodigious' Vatican, the Sistine Chapel where Michael Angelo's Last Judgment 'shews his force of anatomy', and he noted the 'mapps of the country's ... done by Paolo Brilla'. In the Belvedere he was fascinated by the letters of Henry VIII to 'Anne Bullen'. On 4 November he went to Frascati to see three villas, including the Villa Ludovisi 'wch was in an indifferent pickle'. He admired the Barberini Palace: 'I can't pretend to give an account of [rooms], all I can say that it took us up a full afternoon'. In the church of S.Girolamo della Carita he saw Domenichino's St Jerome which, he wrote, was 'reckoned the second among the four principal pictures of Rome viz the first the Transfiguration on St Pietro Montorio by Raffael, the second of St Jerome by Domenichino, the third Romualdo, in the church of - by Andrea Sacchi and the fourth the taking down from the Cross in the Convent of French Minors at the Trinita dei Monti by Volterra'. Of these four pictures, the first three are now in the Vatican, the fourth remains in situ.
On 7 November he visited the Palazzo Farnese where 'all the marbles [had] gone to Palma' and, after a visit to the Raphaels and 'Hanibale Caraci', 'went to the Academy in wch are kept in Rome Professors of Sculpture, Graving Painting and all other Sciences at the K of France's expence to learn a perfection in those arts ... and copying all ye best pieces of each kind the first of furnishing his own palace wth copy's of these things of wch he can't have ... and the other of bringing those arts to be practis'd in his kingdom'. On 8 November he went to the Palazzo Colonna, 'the gallery to wch in that nature there is nothing to be compard ... the volta painted by Chiari with works by Poussin and di Bologna. The Constable has order'd a curtain to be drawn over some of the Pictures thinking them too loose and yet leaves that of his own Mother naked as she was born'. On the 11 November he marvelled at the Palazzo Borghese where he admired the works of Albani and Titian. His diary ends on 13 November.
On 4 January 1710 he wrote to Lady Coventry from Naples: 'I don't doubt your ladyship will be surprized to find that I left Rome so soon'; two of his friends with whom he shared a house, Lord Stafford's grandsons, William Stafford-Howard and Mr Holman, had smallpox, but he intended to return to Rome. He did so early in March and in one of his last letters, to the Rev. Charles Aldrich, he wrote 'pray pardon the nonsense, my head being at this time pretty much out of order'. He died in Rome on 4 March 1710 of smallpox and his body was brought home to Oxford, to be buried at Christ Church.
1. Badminton MSS, fmr 3/1 and 2, and fmt/b 1/2/14. 2. SP 99/58, f.32 (Cole, 3 May 1709). 3. Brown 1327.
L. A.S