[3] In his day he was one of the richest lords in England, funding his experiments, later self-funding his military endeavours, and sending large amounts of money to King Charles I during the English Civil War.

[4] After a month with his force of over 2,000 troops encamped at Highnam, outside Gloucester, in March 1643 Herbert left them and travelled to meet the king at Oxford.

In his absence the entire force surrendered without any exchange of fire, earning it the title "The Mushroom Army" (they appeared and disappeared very quickly).

[6] In extricating himself from that position, he became a close ally of Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, and a potential replacement for James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde as royalist leader.

He was discovered, charged with high treason and sent to the Tower of London; he was treated leniently by the Council of State, and released on bail in 1654.

[8] That year he took up again his interest in engineering and inventions, leasing a house at Vauxhall where his Dutch or German technician Kaspar Kalthoff could work.

It was designed for purposes of irrigation, and would "raise to the height of forty feet, by the strength of one man and in the space of one minute of time, four large buckets of water."

[citation needed] Almost 200 years after his death, in 1861, Victorian patent inspector Bennet Woodcroft attempted to locate the grave and the model steam engine which the Marquis stated should be buried with him.

[13] Archive documents indicate ecclesiastical permission was not obtained, yet Woodcroft and a party locked themselves inside the church on 4 January 1861, and opened the crypt.

"The lead was therefore cut and folded back and underneath there was found a carefully placed ceiling of beautifully glass-like green wax which seemed quite untouched by decay."

They then returned to coffin 7, with their report stating: ... making a long cut through the stiff close shroud and inserting the axe point in the edge we lifted up the naked body of the renowned Marquis of Worcester.