DUCH COURAGE
HISTORY
Elizabeth Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort (née Berkeley; c. 1713 – 9 April 1799) was born in Stoke Gifford in Gloucestershire to John Symes Berkeley and Elizabeth Norborne. Her younger brother was Norborne, Lord Botetourt. The name Elizabeth Somerset came up which is presumably the same as Elizabetha. A stone monument to the memory of her daughter Lady Elizabeth Somerset is located in Stoke Park, Bristol. It is engraved with the Latin inscription;Â
ELIZABETHA SOMERSET
CAROLI DUCIS BEAUFORT FILIA SECUNDA HIC OBIIT VII
MAII MDCCLX
RESTITUTUM ANNO MMIV
This translates as ‘Elizabeth Somerset, second daughter of Charles Duke of Beaufort, died here 7 May 1760. Restored in the year 2004’. She was killed when her horse shied.
I think that the plaque was put up in 2004 and maybe the monument was rebuilt then for a report Date unknown, but sometime in the past thirty years] says that the Obelisk is reduced to a six-metre stump, and it is devoid of its Ashlar facing and missing the inscription. [Another report says it is the second monument erected on this spot.
Duchess of Beaufort is a title held by the wife of the Duke of Beaufort in the Peerage of England. In 1657 Henry Somerset, 3rd Marquess of Worcester married Mary Capell and in 1682 the dukedom was created by Charles II, making Henry the first Duke and Mary the first Duchess of Beaufort.
The dukedom was named after Henry Somerset’s fifth great-grandfather Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset, whose legitimized children held the surname Somerset. The name Beaufort refers to a castle in Champagne, France (now Montmorency-Beaufort) and it is the only current dukedom to take its name from a place outside the British Isles. The family seat is Badminton House near Chipping Sodbury in the unitary authority of South Gloucestershire. The principal burial place of the Dukes and Duchesses of Beaufort is St Michael and All Angels Church, Badminton. Traditionally a widowed peeress puts “Dowager” in her style. If a widowed peeress is also predeceased by the next Duke, any surviving widow of that Duke does not use the style of Dowager until the current dowager has died or remarried. The name Dowager, as in Dowager Duchess means a Widow of the last owner of the estate as opposed to being the wife of the son who now owns the estate after the death of his father, the Duchess’s husband. We still haven’t got a date for when Elizabeth Somerset, Dowager Duchess lived and died but we suspect that she was around in the 1780’s or thereabouts.
 Down at the Duchess Lake not so far from the monument where there is a story of a young boy sometimes a little girl who drowned there, Duchess Beaufort had the lake drained after her or his death and has been used on and off ever since mostly nowadays as a fishing spot I see a lot of night fishers out there when the lake isn’t dried up.The Duchess Lake [Also called the Duchess Pond] was filled in in 1968 when the M32 motorway was built through Stoke Park but at some point after this, it was partly dug out again to provide fishing for an Angling club. There is also a long Barrow [Probably Bronze Age, although it could be Saxon as there was a Saxon settlement in the Stoke Park grounds up near the children’s playground by Romney Avenue, Lockleaze The lake is named after the Duchess of Beaufort on account that she used to spend time at this small lake while alive and is said to also haunt around the lake when she’s not riding her horse around. I now also began to wonder if the duchess was actually buried beneath this monument, it was something that had recently occurred to me although we have no proof either way on this matter, it certainly isn’t impossible though but I hope not as I’ve been dancing all around the monument and by that I mean climbing on it and using it as a perch to sit down it would be weird if I found out that she was buried underneath it is a grave monument after all.