Somerset was the younger son of
Henry Somerset, 2nd Duke of Beaufort and his second wife, Rachel Noel. He was educated at
Winchester College and matriculated as
University College, Oxford on 19 June 1725, being awarded MA on 16 October 1727. Somerset was a
High Tory and 'a most determined and unwavering
Jacobite.' He was returned as
Member of Parliament for
Monmouthshire his family's seat at a by-election on 17 May 1731. At the
1734 British general election, he transferred to
Monmouth. He adopted a traditional Tory line in Parliament, which included voting against the repeal of the
Test Act in 1736; this demonstrates the complexity of the English Jacobite movement, which was staunchly anti-Catholic, yet in theory supported a Catholic monarchy. Somerset was returned again for Monmouth at the
1741 British general election. but as with many aristocratic Jacobite sympathisers, the Government took no action against Beaufort. One of the complexities of 18th-century politics was the hostility between Hanoverian monarchs and their heirs; as George II supported the Whigs, his son Frederick, Prince of Wales described himself as a Tory even though many of them were in theory Jacobites. Since the Prince's 'programme' effectively amounted to ousting the current incumbents, Beaufort agreed to support him and in May 1749, Horace Walpole reported his presence at a meeting 'between the Prince's party and the Jacobites.' In September 1750, Beaufort and Lord Westmorland jointly presided at a meeting of English Jacobites held during
Charles Stuart's secret visit to London in September 1750, which effectively signalled the last flicker of the Jacobite movement. Beaufort died on 28 October 1756 and was buried in the family vault at Badminton, Gloucestershire; a contemporary described him as 'a man of sense, spirit and activity, unblameable in his morals, but questionable in his political capacity'. His wife Elizabeth died on 9 April 1799. ==Family==