Worcester, EDWARD SOMERSET, MARQUIS OF, inventor of the steam-engine, was born about 1601, probably at Worcester House in the Strand, the eldest of the thirteen children of the fifth Earl and first Marquis of Worcester (c. 1577–1646). He was brought up at Raglan Castle, and in 1628 married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Dormer, soon after which we find him engaged in mechanical pursuits in conjunction with the 'unparalleled workman,' Caspar Kaltoff, his lifelong assistant. His first wife died in 1635, leaving him one son and two daughters, and in 1639 he married Lady Margaret O'Brien, daughter and co-heiress of the Earl of Thomond. A devout Roman Catholic, during the Great Rebellion he cast in his lot from the first with the king; in 1642 was made General of South Wales; in 1644 was created Earl of Glamorgan, having till then borne the courtesy title of Lord Herbert; and in 1645 was despatched to Ireland to raise troops for the king's service. His mission—a secret one—mis-carried; and, Charles disowning him with characteristic duplicity, he was for a brief space imprisoned. In 1646 he succeeded his father, who had stoutly defended Raglan Castle against the Roundheads; and in 1648 he went into exile in France. In 1652, venturing back to England, he was sent to the Tower, but in 1654 was let out on bail, and at the Restoration recovered a portion of his vast estates—he claimed to have disbursed £918,000 'for king and country.' He died in London, 3d April 1667, and was buried at Raglan. His Century of Inventions, written in 1655, but first printed in 1663 (more than twenty times reprinted), gives a brief account of a hundred inventions—ciphers, signals, automata, mechanical appliances, &c. No. 68 deals with 'an admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire'—the steam apparatus which could raise a column of water to the height of 40 feet, and which seems to have been actually at work at Vauxhall from 1663 till 1670, Cosmo de' Medici III., Grand-duke of Tuscany, having seen and described it in 1663.
See the Life of the Marquis of Worcester (1863), by Henry Dircks, prefixed to his annotated reprint of the Century.