THE HERBERTS.—(SECOND PERIOD.)
THE new Lord Herbert of Cherbury marrying Barbara, niece and heiress of William Herbert, third Earl and Marquiifif Powis (whose lineage we shall have presently to notice), was created, on the 27th May, 1748, Baron POWiti of Powis Castle, Viscount Ludlow, Shropshire, and Earl of Powis. He died 1772, and was succeeded as second Earl of Powis by his son George Edward Henry Arthur, who died unmarried January 16, 1801, when all his honours became extinct. His sister, Lady Henrietta-Antonia, however, having married Edward, Lord Clive, the latter, on the 14th May, 1804, was created Baron Herbert of Cherbury, Baron Prods of Powis Castle, Viscount Clive of Ludlow, and Earl of Powis, and his grandson, Edward James Herbert (which name the family have assumed instead of Clive) is the third and present Earl of Powis; and thus through heiresses represents the legitimate line of the founder of the Herbert family. Another peerage also in the line of Sir Richard Herbert of Colebrooke had been created and become extinct. Charles Herbert, younger brother of Matthew Herbert, of Dolgitog, and uncle of the first Lord Herbert of Cherbury, left a son who, as Sir Edward Herbert, became dis- tinguished in the reign of Charles I., and as his Attorney-General got into trouble for preferring the accusation against the five members in January, 1642. He adhered to the Royal cause daring the Civil War, and followed Charles II. into exile, where he became his titular Chancellor, but died in 1657, leaving his children, who had remained in England with their mother, in great indigence. His sons ran different careers ; but two of them ex- perienced not very dissimilar fates. Arthur entered the navy, rose to be Rear-Admiral under James II., and was made Master of the Robes. He was much beloved by the sailors, and reckoned one of the best naval officers the aristocracy produced. He was heedless of religion, fond of pleasure and expense, had no private estate, and his places brought him in 4,000/. a year, and besides he had been long reckoned one of the most devoted of the personal adherent* of James. But when at a private interview the King himself solicited him to vote for the repeal of the Test Act, he said that his honour and conscience would not allow him to give any such pledge. "Nobody doubts your honour," said the King, "but a man who lives as you do ought not to talk about his conscience." Herbert replied, "I have many faults, Sir, but I could name people who talk much more about conscience than I am in the habit of doing, and yet lead lives as loose as mine." On this home retort to the King he was dismissed from all his places, and his accounts as Master of the Robes most severely scrutinized. Under these cir- cumstances it is not surprising that Arthur Herbert readily listened to the overtures of the Prince of Orange, and engaged to use his influence with the navy in William's behalf. He undertook to convey to the Prince- the-invitation of the nobles, and did so, dressed as a common sailor, reaching the Dutch coast just after the trial of the Bishops. When the Dutch fleet sailed for England Herbert commanded the rear squadron, the post of danger, and in which were placed all the English sailors. On the success of the Revolution he was thanked by the House of Commons and raised to the peerage, May 29, 1689, as Baron Herbert of Torbay, Devonshire, and Earl of Torrington, and after an indecisive encounter with the French fleet in Bantry Bay was made First Commissioner of the Admiralty. But, spoilt by prosperity, he sank again hopelessly into a voluptuary, and left the fleet idle month after month in harbour while he revelled in Lon- don. He soon got the nickname of Lord Tarry-in-Town. He carried his debauchery on board ship, and his flag-ship became a little Versailles, in which he was waited on and even dressed by his captains. He was also almost constantly intoxicated. The whole fleet soon became demoralized, and the victuallers took the opportunity of his apathy to provide the most atrocious provisions. Meanwhile the French cruisers swept the Channel, and the mer- chant service finding they could secure an English convoy only by heavy bribes had recourse to Dutch privateers. In 1690 a new Admiralty commission was issued and Torrington displaced, but his reputation as a sailor was so high that his anger was appeased by a pension of 3,000/. a year, and a grant of ten thousand acres of Crown lands in the Peterborough Level. He remained at the head of the fleet. Soon after a large French fleet appeared in the Channel, and Torrington, in command of the combined English and Dutch ships, sailed to the Isle of Wight to oppose them ; but losing heart at their superiority of numbers, he retreated towards the Straits of Dover till stopped off Beachy Head by a posi- tive and angry order from the Council of Regency to fight the enemy. He gave battle accordingly on the 30th June, was defeated, and took refuge in the Thames: He is said to have left through spite all the brunt of the fight to the Dutch. This may explain why, when in December he had been tried by a court-martial and acquitted, the English sailors still retained a feeling for him ; but William dismissed him from the service. He died Apri114, 1716, without issue, and his titles then became extinct. His brother Edward entered the law as a profession, and in the reign of Charles II. was sent as Attorney-General to Ireland. On his return from this in 1685 his strong absolutist opinions, for he held the five members as culpable as the regicides, and his pleasant manners obtained for him favour at Court. He was made Chief Justice of Chester and Attorney-General to the Duke of York, and knighted. He obtained no leading practice at the bar, and was looked upon as a mere dilettante lawyer ; but was nevertheless next appointed Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and was sworn a member of the Privy Council. Burnet admits him to have been "a well-bred and virtuous man, gracious and good-natured." In June, 1686, he pronounced judgment in favour of the King's dispensing power. He rose to such favour with King James in consequence that he was expected to supplant Jeffreys as Chancellor; but refusing to admit the King's power to exercise martial law in time of peace, or to sanction the execution of a deserter unlawfully convicted, he fell into disgrace, and was degraded from the chiefship of the King's Bench to that of the Common Pleas. But at the Revolution, unlike his brother Arthur, he adhered to James, followed him into exile, and was appointed, like his father, titular Chancellor of England. He was created at the same time by James Baron Portland, of Portland, Dorset, and excepted by Parliament from the Act of Indemnity. But as a Protestant he was not allowed to sit at James's Council Board, and he died in exile in 1698 at Paris, and was buried in the same cemetery as his father. A third brother (the eldest), Charles, rose to be a general, and died fighting fOr King William at the battle of Aghrim in 1691. -To him the Earldom of Torrington had been limited in case of his surviving his brother Arthur.
Having thus exhausted the legitimate line of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, we now come to the descendants of Richard Herbert, of Ewyas, his illegitimate son by Maud Graunt. This Sir Richard of Ewyas—who must be carefully distinguished from the Sir Richard of Colebrooke (the Earl's brother), who was the ancestor of the legitimate lines of Herbert, had also a seat at Grove Radnor, in Herefordshire, and lies buried at Abergavenny. He married Margaret, daughter and heiress of Sir Matthew Cradock, of Swansea, Glamorganshire, by whom he left issue three sons, the eldest of whom, William Herbert, was the founder of a new line of Earls. In the 26th of Henry VIII., being then esquire of the body to the King, he had a grant with John Basset of the office of Attorney-General in Glamorganshire, and to himself alone of the office of Receiver of the King's Revenues there during life. In the 28th of that reign he had an annuity granted him of 46/. 13s. 4d. On January 24, 1544, he was made Captain of the castle and town of Aberystwitb, with the custody of Carmarthen Castle for life. In the same year he was knighted, and had a grant to himself and Anne his wife of the house and site of the late abbey of Wuzort, in Wiltshire (the revenues of which at the tune of dissolution, according to Dugdale, were 601/. is.
to Speed, 652/. lls. 54d., per annum), and of divers lands in that county, and in Hampshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. This great grant was probably owing to his connection with the Royal Family, his wife Anne being sister of Queen Catherine Parr. He had also licence to retain thirty persons at his will and pleasure over and above all such persons as attend on him, and to give them his livery, badges, and cognizance. Being Chief Gentle. man of the Privy Chamber and of the Privy Council to Henry VIII. at his death, he was made by him one of his executors, was named for a legacy of 300/., and appointed one of the counsellors to Prince Edward. At the funeral he and Sir Anthony Denny were the only persons who rode to Windsor on the same chariot with the King's body. On the accession of Edward Sir William Herbert threw himself warmly into all the measures of the Pro- testant Council—raised forces and aided in the suppression of the insurrection in Wiltshire and Somerset in the third year of the reign, was made Master of the Horse, and with Lord Russell marched to suppress another and more formid- able insurrection in Devonshire and Cornwall. He led 1,000 of his Welshmen to Exeter, and, as we have already seen in our account of the Russell; the insurgents were crushed, Sir William, at his own request to Lord Russell, commanding the van in the encounter at Sampford-Courtney. On his return, Sir Wil- liam was, on December 1, 1548, elected a Knight of the Garter ; and on April 8 following (1549) was appointed Lord President of the Council in the Marches of Wales, with a grant of 500 marks a year, and soon after received the wardship of Henry Wriotthesley, Earl of Southampton. He twice commanded the forces sent into Vermandois, was twice Governor of Calais, and on October 10, 1551, was created Baron Herbert of Cardiff, and the next day Earl of Pembroke. He owed these titles to his adherence to Dudley in the crisis of the struggle between him and the Duke of Somerset; and on December 1 in the same year he was one of the peers who sat at the trial of the Duke. His wife Anne died in 1551, at his house of Baynard's Castle, and he gave her a mag- nificent funeral at St. Paul's. He was one of the noblemen and gentlemen who raised and equipped bodies of men for the King's service in 1552, and on the 26th of May in that year he appeared in Greenwich Park with his men in coats of embroidery, following a standard of red, white, and blue, with a green dragon with an arm in its mouth. On February 17, 1553, he rode into London and to his house of Baynard's Castle, with 300 horse in his retinue —100 of them gentlemen, in blue cloth with chains of gold, and badges of a dragon on their sleeves. In the same year, on sur- rendering his place of Master of the Horse, he had a grant of the manor of Dunyate, in Somersetshire, with other lands and posses lions, and the keepership of Clarendon and several other forests and parks, to him and his son for their lives. Hitherto he had firmly adhered to Dudley, and shared his coun- sels. Just before the death of the King, when Lady Jane Grey was married to Northumberland's son, Lord Guildford Dudley, a match had been made between her sister Catherine Grey and Pembroke's eldest son, Henry, Lord Herbert. The Earl had appended his signature, seemingly willingly, to Edward's new dis- position of the crown, and was one of the first to pay his allegiance to Queen Jane. But whether it was that the crafty nobleman read in the signs of the times the approaching downfall of Dud- ley's plans, or whether he thought he could make better terms by betraying than by supporting his friend, he not only failed him in the first hour of trial, but soon after put himself forward osten- tatiously in favour of Mary. Mr. Froude thus describes his posi- tion at this crisis :—" Pembroke, in the black volume of appro- priations, was the most deeply compromised. Pembroke, in Wilts and Somerset, where his new lands lay, was hated for his oppres- sion of the poor, and had much to fear from a Catholic sovereign, could a Catholic sovereign obtain the reality as well as the name of power,—Pembroke, so said Northumberland, had been the first to propose the conspiracy to him, while his eldest son had married Catherine Grey. But as Northumberland's designs began to ripen he had endeavoured to steal from the Court. He was a distin- guished soldier, yet he was never named to command the army which was to go against Mary. Lord Herbert's marriage was out- ward and nominal merely,—a form which had not yet become a reality, and never did. Although Pembroke was the first of the Coun- cil to do homage to Jane, Northumberland evidently doubted him. He was acting and would continue to act for his own personal in- terests only. With his vast estates and vast hereditary influence in South Wales and on the Border, he could bring a larger force into the field than any other single nobleman in England ; and he could purchase the secure possession of his acquisitions by a well timed assistance to Mary as readily as by lending his strength to buttress the throne of her rival." He attempted to evade the surveillance under which the Council were kept at the Tower, failed once, but at last, with Arundel and others, succeeded in reaching his house of Baynard's Castle, where they harangued the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and chief citizens in favour of Mary, Pembroke declaring, "If words are not enough, this blade shall make Mary Queen, or I will lose my life." Of course
on the triumph of that Queen he was received into favour ; yet when Wyatt rose, nominally to oppose the Spanish match, but really to depose Mary and place Elizabeth on the throne, Pembroke
for several weeks wavered, and the Greys at one time thought they had gained him, or at least that he would stand neutral. When
Gardiner advised Mary to fly, and the Imperial Ambassador entreated her to remain, the Queen declared that she would be guided by Pembroke and Clinton, and if they would stand by her she would remain and see out the struggle. Pembroke then decided on supporting her, and promised to defend her with his life. But his previous lukewarmness had rendered this now no easy task. His cavalry and his archers checked but could not wholly arrest the march of Wyatt through London, Courienay and his part of the Royal troops fled, crying that all was lost, elite were raised throughout the Palace that Pembroke had played false ; but Mary remained unshaken, and the enterprise of Wyatt failed. On November 9, 1554, Pembroke rode into London to attend the Parliament with a retinue of 2,000 horsemen and 60 gentlemen, all richly equipped as before described, and carried the sword before Philip and Mary. In 1557 he was appointed Captain-General of the Queen's Army beyond the Seas, and brought to the siege of St. Quentin's 1,000 horse, 4,000 foot, and 2,000 "pioneers," or, as we should now call them, "engineers."
On the accession of Elizabeth, Pembroke was of course at once welcomed to her Council table, and appointed one of those who were to settle the alterations in religion, and administer the oath of supremacy. For some years he continued a loyal subject to his new sovereign, but at last, in 1569, fretting under the ascendancy of Burghley, he engaged in a plot with the Duke of Norfolk and the Earls of Arundel and Leicester against that nobleman. At first they absented themselves from Court, and when the Queen inquired the reason protested against Burghley's counsels. The Queen warmly defended him, but Burghley himself bent for the moment to the combination and bided his time, confining him- self meanwhile more strictly to his administrative duties. He bad not long to wait. Failing to remove Burghley from Elizabeth's side by an application to the Queen, Pembroke and Arundel hit on the dangerous expedient of compelling the Queen to follow their advice by making a match between Norfolk and the captive Queen of Scots. They with Leicester addressed a letter to Mary, in which they offered to procure her restoration to the throne of Scotland and her succession to Elizabeth on certain conditions— somewhat similar to those which were subsequently proposed by the younger Cecil to King James, but with the addition of the match with Norfolk. On achieving this match and the release of Mary, the noblemen thought they could at the head of the nobility alarm Elizabeth into any concessions. But she had already got the threads of the conspiracy in her hands, and Leicester hastened to purchase forgiveness by abandoning his colleagues. Norfolk, Pembroke, and Arundel left London, the first returning again on an order from the Queen, and being committed to the Tower. Pembroke and .Arundel were forbidden the Queen's presence, and Pembroke confined to his own house. Thus the Herbert, like the Sterdey, tried his hand against Elizabeth, and failed. The Earl of Pembroke died at Hampton Court on March 17 of the following year, 1570, and thus escaped the dangerous temptation of engaging in further plots. He left two sons, Henry, who succeeded him as second Earl of Pembroke, and Sir Edward Herbert, of Powis
Castle, Montgomeryshire, ancestor of the Marquises of Powis. Powis Castle was a purchase made in the reign of Elizabeth by the Herbert& Sir Edward Herbert left a son, Sir William, who was made a Knight of the Bath, and on the 2nd of April, 1629, was created Baron Powis, and died March 7, 1655. By his wife Eleanor, daughter of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, he had a son and successor, Percy, second Baron Powis, who had been created a baronet in the lifetime of his father (November 16, 1622), and died in 1667. His son and successor, William, was on the 4th April, 1674, created Earl of Fowls. He was considered the leading Catholic peer in England, and as such was one of the five Catholic lords sent to the Tower in 1678. Warmly attached to the Duke of York, he was after his accession 88 James II., on the 26th March, 1687, created Viscount Montgomery and Marquis of Powis. He was a man of moderate views and high personal character, more generally respected and liked in England than any other Catholic. He endeavoured to oppose the more violent party in the councils of James, and particularly Tyrconnel— " lying Dick Talbot." But on the Revolution he retired to France with his Royal master, and was outlawed by the English Parlia- ment. James afterwards gave him the additional titular honours of Marquis of Montgomery and Duke of Powis. He died at St. Germain's, 2nd June, 1696. His son Witham' wali
restored to the forfeited honours of Viscount Montgomery and Earl and Marquis of Powis, and took his seat in the House of Lards in 1722. He died in 1745, and was succeeded as third Marquis of Powis by his elder son William, who died unmarried in 1748, leaving his whole estate to Henry Arthur Herbert, of Dolgilog, who married his niece Barbara, posthumous daughter and heiress of Lord Edward Herbert, second son of the second Marquis. Of this Henry Arthur Herbert we have already spoken. This is therefore the third extinct peerage once in the possession of the Herberta, the other two being the lordships of Cherbury and the earldom of Torrington. It remains only to finish the main line, that of the Wilton Herberts, Earls of Pembroke and Mont- gomery.
Previous page
