His amusing auto-biography ends with an account of a noise from heaven, when he prayed for a sign of the Divine will, whether or not he should print his book.
Not many other circumstances of his life are on record. He was raised to the Irish peerage in 1625, and, afterwards, was created an English baron, by the title of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in Shropshire. He published another Latin work, in support of the cause of infidelity, and then gave to the world his History of the Reign of Henry VIII.; a book which has been always characterised, by writers who have never read a line of it, as a master-piece of historic biography; and if gross partiality for his hero, profound ignorance of human nature, imperfect acquaintance with his subject, and a pedantic style, constitute the excellence of memoir-writing, Lord Herbert is an author of the first class.
Though he had been raised to the peerage by the Stuarts, yet in the days of Charles I. we find him on the side of the parliament. Montgomery-castle was demolished by the King’s troops, and the parliament made him a pecuniary compensation. He removed to London, died in 1648, and was buried in St. Giles’s.
His character.
His inferiority to the knights of yore.
Such was Lord Herbert of Cherbury. His life may be placed in opposition to, rather than in harmony with, the heroes of early chivalric times. He had their courage, it is true, but he had none of their dignity and nobleness, none of their manly grace; and there was a fantastic trifling in his conduct, which their elevated natures would have scorned. He was no Christian knight: the superstition of the Chandos’s and Mannys, gross as it was, is not so offensive to the moral sense as the craft and subtlety of Lord Cherbury’s intellect, which refined Christianity into deism. We can admire the heroes of the days of Edward III., placing their swords’ points on the Gospels, and vowing to defend the truth to the utterance; but how absurd was the fanaticism, and contemptible the vanity, of him who expected that Heaven would declare its will that he should deliver to the world the vain chimeras of his imagination!
Decline of chivalric education.
The history of English chivalry is now fast drawing to a close. We may mark the state of the system of chivalric education in the castles of the nobility. Every great lord, as his ancestors had been, was still attended by several of the inferior nobility and gentry, and such service was not accounted dishonourable. The boys were, as of old, called pages, though perhaps the age for this title somewhat stepped beyond the ancient limit.
But this was not the only change in that class of the chivalry of England. In former days pages had been the attendants of the great in the amusements of the chace and the baronial hall; and had sometimes shared, with the squire, the more perilous duties of the battle-plain. In the course of time, as the frame of society became more settled, the arts of peace smoothed the stern fierceness of chivalry, and the page was the honorary servant of the lord or his lady, in the proud ceremonial of nobility, and never mixed in war. He continued to be a person of gentle birth, and his dress was splendid; circumstances extremely favourable to that singular state of manners which permitted a woman, without any loss of her good name, to follow him she admired in the disguise of a gentle page, and gradually to win his affections by the deep devotion of her love. Poetry may have adorned such instances of passion, for the subject is full of interest and pathos; but the poets in the best days of English verse so frequently copied from the world around them, that we cannot but believe they drew also in this instance from nature. This form of manners was romantic; but it certainly was not chivalric: for in pure days of chivalry the knights, and not the damsels, were the wooers.—But every thing was changed or degraded.
The general state of the page in the last days of chivalry may be collected from one of the dramas of Ben Jonson, where Lovel, a complete gentleman, a soldier, and a scholar, is desirous to take as his page the son of Lord Frampul, who was disguised as the host of the Light Heart Inn at Barnet:
“Lov. A fine child!
You will not part with him, mine host?
“Host. Who told you
I would not.
“Lov. I but ask you.
“Host. And I answer,
To whom? for what?
“Lov. To me, to be my page.
“Host. I know no mischief yet the child hath done,
To deserve such a destiny.
“Lov. Why?
“Host. * * * * * *
Trust me I had rather
Take a fair halter, wash my hands, and hang him
Myself, make a clean riddance of him, than——
“Lov. What?
“Host. Than damn him to that desperate course of life.
“Lov. Call you that desperate, which by a line
Of institution, from our ancestors,
Hath been derived down to us, and received
In a succession, for the noblest way
Of breeding up our youth, in letters, arms,
Fair mien, discourses, civil exercise,
And all the blazon of a gentleman?
Where can he learn to vault, to ride, to fence,
To move his body gracefuller, to speak
His language purer, or to tune his mind
Or manners, more to the harmony of nature,
Than in these nurseries of nobility?
“Host. Ay that was when the nursery’s self was noble.
And only virtue made it, not the market,
That titles were not vented at the drum,
Or common outcry, goodness gave the greatness,
And greatness worship: every house became
An academy of honour, and those parts
We see departed, in the practice now,
Quite from the institution.”[132]