HERBERT (Family). The sudden rising of this English family to great wealth and high place is the more remarkable in that its elevation belongs to the 15th century and not to that age of the Tudors when many new men made their way upwards into the ranks of the nobility. Earlier generations of a pedigree which carries the origin of the Herberts to Herbert the Chamberlain, a Domesday tenant, being disregarded, their patriarch may be taken to be one Jenkin ap Adam (temp. Edward III.), who had a small Monmouthshire estate at Llanvapley and the office of master sergeant of the lordship of Abergavenny, a place which gave him precedence after the steward of that lordship. Jenkin’s son, Gwilim ap Jenkin, who followed his father as master sergeant, is given six sons by the border genealogists, no less than six score pedigrees finding their origin in these six brothers. Their order is uncertain, although the Progers of Werndee, the last of whom sold his ancestral estate in 1780, are reckoned as the senior line of Gwilim’s descendants. But Thomas ap Gwilim Jenkin, called the fourth son, is ancestor of all those who bore the surname of Herbert.
Thomas’s fifth son, William or Gwilim ap Thomas, who died in 1446, was the first man of the family to make any figure in history. This Gwilim ap Thomas was steward of the lordships of Usk and Caerleon under Richard, duke of York. Legend makes him a knight on the field of Agincourt, but his knighthood belongs to the year 1426. He appears to have married twice, his first wife being Elizabeth Bluet of Raglan, widow of Sir James Berkeley, and his second a daughter of David Gam, a valiant Welsh squire slain at Agincourt. Royal favour enriched Sir William, and he was able to buy Raglan Castle from the Lord Berkeley, his first wife’s son, the deed, which remains among the Beaufort muniments, refuting the pedigree-maker’s statement that he inherited the castle as heir of his mother “Maude, daughter of Sir John Morley.” His sons William and Richard, both partisans of the White Rose, took the surname of Herbert in or before 1461. Playing a part in English affairs remote from the Welsh Marches, their lack of a surname may well have inconvenienced them, and their choice of the name Herbert can only be explained by the suggestion that their long pedigree from Herbert the Chamberlain, absurdly represented as a bastard son of Henry I., must already have been discovered for them. Copies exist of an alleged commission issued by Edward IV. to a committee of Welsh bards for the ascertaining of the true ancestry of William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, whom “the chiefest men of skill” in the province of South Wales declare to be the descendant of “Herbert, a noble lord, natural son to King Henry the first,” and it is recited that King Edward, after the creation of the earldom, commanded the earl and Sir Richard his brother to “take their surnames after their first progenitor Herbert fitz Roy and to forego the British order and manner.” But this commission, whose date anticipates by some years the true date of the creation of the earldom, is the work of one of the many genealogical forgers who flourished under the Tudors.
Sir William Herbert, called by the Welsh Gwilim Ddu or Black William, was a baron in 1461 and a Knight of the Garter in the following year. With many manors and castles on the Marches he had the castle, town and lordship of Pembroke, and after the attainder of Jasper Tudor in 1468 was created earl of Pembroke. When in July 1469 he was taken by Sir John Conyers and the northern Lancastrians on Hedgecote, he was beheaded with his brother Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook. The second earl while still a minor exchanged at the king’s desire in 1479 his earldom of Pembroke for that of Huntingdon. In 1484 this son of one whom Hall not unjustly describes as born “a mean gentleman” contracted to marry Katharine the daughter of King Richard III., but her death annulled the contract and the earl married Mary, daughter of the Earl Rivers, by whom he had a daughter Elizabeth, whose descendants, the Somersets, lived in the Herbert’s castle of Raglan until the cannon of the parliament broke it in ruins. With the second earl’s death in 1491 the first Herbert earldom became extinct. No claim being set up among the other descendants of the first earl, it may be taken that their lines were illegitimate. One of the chief difficulties which beset the genealogist of the Herberts lies in their Cambrian disregard of the marriage tie, bastards and legitimate issue growing up, it would seem, side by side in their patriarchal households. Thus the ancestor of the present earls of Pembroke and Carnarvon and of the Herbert who was created marquess of Powis was a natural son of the first earl, one Richard Herbert, whom the restored inscription on his tomb at Abergavenny incorrectly describes as a knight. He was constable and porter of Abergavenny Castle, and his son William, “a mad fighting fellow” in his youth, married a sister of Catherine Parr and thus in 1543 became nearly allied to the king, who made him one of the executors of his will. The earldom of Pembroke was revived for him in 1551. It is worthy of note that all traces of illegitimacy have long since been removed from the arms of the noble descendants of Richard Herbert.
The honours and titles of this clan of marchmen make a long list. They include the marquessate of Powis, two earldoms with the title of Pembroke, two with that of Powis, and the earldoms of Huntingdon and Montgomery, Torrington and Carnarvon, the viscountcies of Montgomery and Ludlow, fourteen baronies and seven baronetcies. Seven Herberts have worn the Garter. The knights and rich squires of the stock can hardly be reckoned, more especially as they must be sought among Raglans, Morgans, Parrys, Vaughans, Progers, Hugheses, Thomases, Philips, Powels, Gwyns, Evanses and Joneses, as well as among those who have borne the surname of Herbert, a surname which in the 19th century was adopted by the Joneses of Llanarth and Clytha, although they claim no descent from those sons of Sir William ap Thomas for whom it was devised.
(O. Ba.)
HERBERT, GEORGE (1593-1633), English poet, was born at Montgomery Castle on the 3rd of April 1593. He was the fifth son of Sir Richard Herbert and a brother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. His mother, Lady Magdalen Herbert, a woman of great good sense and sweetness of character, and a friend of John Donne, exercised great influence over her son. Educated privately until 1605, he was then sent to Westminster School, and in 1609 he became a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was made B.A. in 1613, M.A. and major fellow of the college in 1616. In 1618 he became Reader in Rhetoric, and in 1619 orator for the university. In this capacity he was several times brought into contact with King James. From Cambridge he wrote some Latin satiric verses[1] in defence of the universities and the English Church against Andrew Melville, a Scottish Presbyterian minister. He numbered among his friends Dr Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Izaak Walton, Bishop Andrewes and Francis Bacon, who dedicated to him his translation of the Psalms. Walton tells us that “the love of a court conversation, mixed with a laudable ambition to be something more than he was, drew him often from Cambridge to attend the king wheresoever the court was,” and James I. gave him in 1623 the sinecure lay rectory of Whitford, Flintshire, worth £120 a year. The death of his patrons, the duke of Richmond and the marquess of Hamilton, and of King James put an end to his hopes of political preferment; moreover he probably distrusted the conduct of affairs under the new reign. Largely influenced by his mother, he decided to take holy orders, and in July 1626 he was appointed prebendary of Layton Ecclesia (Leighton Bromswold), Huntingdon. Here he was within two miles of Little Gidding, and came under the influence of Nicholas Ferrar. It was at Ferrar’s suggestion that he undertook to rebuild the church at Layton, an undertaking carried through by his own gifts and the generosity of his friends. There is little doubt that the close friendship with Ferrar had a large share in Herbert’s adoption of the religious life. In 1630 Charles I., at the instance of the earl of Pembroke, whose kinsman Herbert was, presented him to the living of Fugglestone with Bemerton, near Salisbury, and he was ordained priest in September. A year before, after three days’ acquaintance, he had married Jane Danvers, whose father had been set on the marriage for a long time. He had often spoken of his daughter Jane to Herbert, and “so much commended Mr Herbert to her, that Jane became so much a Platonic as to fall in love with Mr Herbert unseen.” The story of the poet’s life at Bemerton, as told by Walton, is one of the most exquisite pictures in literary biography. He devoted much time to explaining the meaning of the various parts of the Prayer-Book, and held services twice every day, at which many of the parishioners attended, and some “let their plough rest when Mr Herbert’s saints-bell rung to prayers, that they might also offer their devotions to God with him.” Next to Christianity itself he loved the English Church. He was passionately fond of music, and his own hymns were written to the accompaniment of his lute or viol. He usually walked twice a week to attend the cathedral at Salisbury, and before returning home, would “sing and play his part” at a meeting of music lovers. Walton illustrates Herbert’s kindness to the poor by many touching anecdotes, but he had not been three years in Bemerton when he succumbed to consumption. He was buried beneath the altar of his church on the 3rd of March 1633.
None of Herbert’s English poems was published during his lifetime. On his death-bed he gave to Nicholas Ferrar a manuscript with the title The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. This was published at Cambridge, apparently for private circulation, almost immediately after Herbert’s death, and a second imprint followed in the same year. On the title-page of both is the quotation “In his Temple doth every man speak of his honour.” The Temple is a collection of religious poems connected by unity of sentiment and inspiration. Herbert tried to interpret his own devout meditations by applying images of all kinds to the ritual and beliefs of the Church. Nothing in his own church at Bemerton was too commonplace to serve as a starting-point for the epigrammatic expression of his piety. The church key reminds him that “it is my sin that locks his handes,” and the stones of the floor are patience and humility, while the cement that binds them together is love and charity. The chief faults of the book are obscurity, verbal conceits and a forced ingenuity which shows itself in grotesque puns, odd metres and occasional want of taste. But the quaint beauty of Herbert’s style and its musical quality give The Temple a high place. “The Church Porch,” “The Agony,” “Sin,” “Sunday,” “Virtue,” “Man,” “The British Church,” “The Quip,” “The Collar,” “The Pulley,” “The Flower,” “Aaron” and “The Elixir” are among the best known of these poems. Herbert and Keble are the poets of Anglican theology. No book is fuller of devotion to the Church of England than The Temple, and no poems in our language exhibit more of the spirit of true Christianity. Every page is marked by transparent sincerity, and reflects the beautiful character of “holy George Herbert.”
Nicholas Ferrar’s translation (Oxford, 1638) of the Hundred and Ten Considerations ... of Juan de Valdes contained a letter and notes by Herbert. In 1652 appeared Herbert’s Remains; or, Sundry Pieces of that Sweet Singer of the Temple, Mr George Herbert. This included A Priest to the Temple; or, The Country Parson, his Character, and Rule of Holy Life, in prose; Jacula prudentum, a collection of proverbs with a separate title-page dated 1651, which had appeared in a shorter form as Outlandish Proverbs in 1640; and some miscellaneous matter. The completest edition of his works is that by Dr A. B. Grosart in 1874, this edition of the Poetical works being reproduced in the “Aldine edition” in 1876. The English Works of George Herbert ... (3 vols., 1905) were edited in much detail by G. H. Palmer. A contemporary account of Herbert’s life by Barnabas Oley was prefixed to the Remains of 1652, but the classic authority is Izaak Walton’s Life of Mr George Herbert, published in 1670, with some letters from Herbert to his mother. See also A. G. Hyde, George Herbert and his Times (1907), and the “Oxford” edition of his poems by A. Waugh (1908).