Sir John Somerset, the second son, married Mary, daughter of Thomas Arundel, Lord Arundel of Wardour; and, as will appear in the sequel, he resided at Troy House, near Monmouth.
The fifth son, Thomas Somerset, lived at Rome, 1676; and his brother Charles was governor of Raglan Castle in 1646, and afterwards died a Canon at Cambray in Flanders.
Four other sons died in infancy; and another, later in life, died unmarried.
Kennet, the historian, records, in respect of one of the daughters, that King James reprimanded the Earl, her father, for his sending her to Brussels to be made a nun,[58] in 1620.
But it will be our chief business hereafter to treat especially of the life and labours of the first-named son of this nobleman; only making such allusions to the father, and relating such circumstances affecting him, as serve to throw light on remote particulars of his son’s life.
Of the age of Henry Lord Herbert, at the time of his marriage, we are afforded indirect evidence through Wood, who, speaking of him and his elder brother William (who died unmarried during his father’s lifetime) being at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1591, states the brothers to have been of the respective ages of 15 and 14; so that Henry, being then only 14 years of age, would have been born on or about the year 1577, and marrying in the year 1600, he would at that time be in his 23rd year.
His age has been very variously, and, as it appears, vaguely stated; originating probably with hasty printed statements during the Civil War, when no particular purpose had to be served by accuracy on such a matter. Wood certainly was not likely to be ten years out of truth in recording the ages of youths. It is also more likely that his Lordship in his circumstances, and with his family, had married rather at 23 than at 33 years of age.
We meet with no accounts of the births or baptisms of his children, with the exception of his seventh son, Frederick Somerset, who, according to the Parish Registers of St. Dunstan’s in the West,[73] London, was baptized on the 26th March, 1613, in the house of Lady Morrison in the Friars, she being related through the Russells to Anne Lady Herbert.
James I. was proclaimed on the 24th of March, 1603. The same month Lord Herbert was summoned to Parliament, being then 26 years of age. A great plague was at that time raging in the metropolis, having destroyed 30,000 of the population, rendering his residence in town very perilous.
His Lordship’s father was, in 1604, invested with the Order of the Garter, and on resigning his office of Master of the Horse, on the 1st of January, 1616, having retained it fifteen years, he was, on the 2nd of the same month, made Keeper of the Privy Seal.