An occasion for exercising his fantastic chivalry soon presented itself. A French cavalier snatched a riband from the bonnet of a young lady, and fastened it to his own hat-band. He refused to return it, and the injured damsel asked the English knight to get it restored to her. He accordingly advanced to the Frenchman, courteously, with his hat in his hand, and desired him to restore the riband. Meeting only with a rude denial, he replied he would make him restore it by force. The Frenchman ran away; but finding himself closely pursued, he turned round to the young lady, and was about to restore her the top-knot, when Sir Edward seized his arm, and said to her, “It was I that gave it.”—“Pardon me,” quoth she, “it is he that gives it me.” Sir Edward observed, “I will not contradict you; but if he presumes to say that I did not constrain him to give it, I will fight with him.” No reply was made, and the French gentleman conducted the lady back to the castle. Sir Edward was very anxious for a duel, but none took place; and he was obliged to please his conscience with the reflection, that he had acted agreeably to the oath which he took when inaugurated a knight of the Bath.[131]
On three other occasions, he sported his chivalry in the cause of the ladies; but the stories of these affairs are poor and uninteresting after his most delectable behaviour in the Montmorenci garden.
For many years Sir Edward lived in the court or the camp, in France or England, seldom visiting his wife in Montgomeryshire, and more frequently busied in private brawls (but his challenges never ripened into duels) than engaged in philosophical meditation.
In the year 1614, while he was in the service of the Prince of Orange, a trumpeter came from the hostile (the Spanish) army to his with a challenge,—that if any cavalier would fight a single combat for the sake of his mistress, a Spanish knight would meet him. The Prince allowed Sir Edward to accept the challenge. Accordingly a trumpeter was sent to the Spanish army with the answer, that if the challenger were a knight without reproach, Sir Edward Herbert would answer him with such weapons as they should agree upon. But before this herald could deliver his charge, another Spanish trumpeter reached the camp of the Prince of Orange, declaring that the challenge had been given without the consent of the Marquis of Spinola (the commander), who would not permit it. This appeared strange to the Prince and Sir Edward; and on their thinking that the Spaniards might object to the duel taking place in the camp of the challenged, as it was originally proposed, Sir Edward resolved to go to the enemy, and give him his choice of place. He accordingly went; but Spinola would not suffer the duel to be fought. A noble entertainment greeted the Englishman, the Marquis condescending to present to his guest the best of the meat which his carver offered to himself. He expressed no anger that the challenges had been given; for he politely asked his guest of what disease Sir Francis Vere had died. Sir Edward told him, because he had nothing to do. Spinola replied, in allusion to the idleness of the campaign, “And it is enough to kill a General;” and thus impliedly excused any impatient sallies of his young soldiers.
Sir Henry Wotton, the ambassador of the King of England, having mediated a peace between the Prince of Orange and the Spaniards, our knight proceeded on his travels through Germany and Italy. He complimented a nun upon her singing, while all the other Englishmen present were delighted into silence: but he was always ready to speak as well as to fight for the honour of the knighthood of the Bath. “Die whensoever you will,” said he to the young lady, “you need change neither voice nor face to be an angel!” These words, he assures us, were fatal, for she died shortly afterwards.
He went to Florence, and was more pleased with a nail, which was at one end iron and the other gold, than by all the glories of painting and sculpture with which the Etrurian Athens was then fresh and redolent. He sojourned for some time at Rome, but hastily left the city when the Pope was about to bless him. This refusal of an old man’s benediction proceeded from the vanity of his character. Though perfectly indifferent to Christianity, when he entered Rome he ostentatiously said to the master of the English college, that he came not to the city to study controversies, but to view its antiquities; and if, without scandal to the religion in which he had been born and educated, he might take this liberty, he would gladly spend some time there. A decorous submission to the usages of Rome would not have gained him the world’s talk; and, therefore, he hastily quitted the Consistory when the blessing was about to be given, knowing that such a bold act of contempt on the religion of the place would be bruited every where.
The remainder of his adventures on the Continent is not worthy of record. He returned to England; and, in 1616, he was sent to France as the English ambassador. Previously to his setting off, he engaged to fight a duel, though the day fixed for the circumstance was Sunday; but when he arrived at Paris on a Saturday night, he refused to accept an invitation of the Spanish ambassador for an interview the next morning, because Sunday was a day, which, as he alleged, he wholly gave to devotion. The spirit of duelling was far more powerful in his mind than the love of conformity to religious decencies; but it cost him nothing; indeed, it only aggrandised his importance to decline the visit of the Spanish ambassador on a Sunday. He remained some time in France, maintaining the honour of his country on all occasions; particularly with reference to the mighty question, whether his coachman, or that of the Spanish ambassador, should take precedence.
Sir Edward was instructed by his court to mediate between Louis XIII. and his Protestant subjects; but, instead of conducting the affair with coolness and political sagacity, he quarrelled with Luines, the minister of the French king. Complaints of his conduct were sent to England, and he was recalled. The death of the offended statesman happened soon afterwards, and Herbert was again dispatched to France.
The next remarkable event in his life was the publication of his book “De Veritate,” whose object it was to show the all-sufficiency of natural religion. But he, who denied the necessity of a revelation to the human race, of matters concerning their eternal salvation, fancied that Heaven expressly revealed to him its will that his book should be published. Such are the inconsistencies of infidelity!
“A godless regent trembling at a star!”