HERBERT, William II (1622-?1644), of Wilton, Wilts.

Herbert was the third surviving son of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, when, as his elder brothers departed for a foreign tour, he followed in their footsteps to Exeter College, Oxford in 1635.8Al. Ox. He distinguished himself academically as they had not: at Westminster School he had composed Latin verses for a collection in honour of the king and infant James, duke of York; at Oxford he ‘made a fine oration in Latin to the king’ on the occasion of his visit to the university in August 1636, and ‘delivered it as finely, which did not a little please my lord chamberlain’, his father, and which was ‘well accepted’ by Charles I.9Rec. Old Westminsters, i. 450; SP16/331, f. 27v; Diary of Thomas Crosfield, ed. Boas (1935), 92, 144. By this time Charles Herbert, Lord Herbert, had died in Florence, so it was probably not until after the return alone from abroad of Philip Herbert*, now himself Lord Herbert and Pembroke’s heir, that William in turn went on his travels.10CP.

In the autumn of 1640 his father secured the election of Philip and William to Parliament; both were still under age. The latter was returned not only as a knight for Monmouthshire but also for the Wiltshire pocket borough of Downton and for New Woodstock, of which Pembroke was steward. On 9 November William was excused from the order requiring Members to make their choice between multiple returns on account of being out of the kingdom.11CJ ii. 22b. On 20 November the House heard that he had chosen the higher status seat for Monmouthshire; it is not clear that he was present in person on that day.12CJ ii. 33a; Procs LP i. 208, 218.

Tracing Herbert’s career in the Commons is rendered difficult by the presence of two other Mr Herberts (not counting the soon to be knighted solicitor-general, Edward Herbert II*), William Herbert I* and Richard Herbert*, another peer’s son. All three took the Protestation on 3 May 1641; William Herbert II was more likely the one who subscribed next after his father’s trustee, Sir Benjamin Rudyerd*.13CJ ii. 133a; Procs. LP iv. 171. William I, a Monmouthshire justice of the peace, was probably the Herbert who complained on 26 June of heterodox preaching in the area, but it seems impossible to determine who was the Herbert granted leave to go into the country on 30 June or 16 July.14Procs LP v. 363, 420, 427; CJ ii. 194a, 214a.

Identified as ‘the Lord Pembroke’s son’, on 7 February 1642 Herbert delivered a petition from his county requesting authorisation for the removal of its ammunition depot from the town of Monmouth to Newport because of the prevalence of Catholic recusant families around the former.15PJ i. 294. This was granted, but the mayor and inhabitants of Monmouth resisted, as Herbert was informed in a letter he laid before the House on 29 March. He also presented a list of recusants in the area, headed by Henry Somerset, 5th earl of Worcester, and his son Edward, (another) Lord Herbert. That Oliver Cromwell* was, as on 7 February, the next speaker – then with a Monmouthshire petition for preaching ministers and now with another from a similar source certifying the worrying number of papists – suggests a temporary alliance with more pious and more radical interests, at least partly as a means of challenging the growing assertiveness of the Somersets over the Herberts in south Wales.16PJ i. 303; ii. 103-4. The confrontation was still unresolved on 14 April, when the House ruled that, unless information incriminating the mayor came in the next morning, he should be immediately released from custody; Herbert was to be told of the order.17CJ ii. 527a. A fortnight later, specified as ‘one of the younger sons’ of Pembroke, he produced a statement from Monmouthshire magistrates that their attempt to implement the parliamentary instructions of 29 March, had been prevented by the ‘contemptuous’ refusal of the Monmouth authorities.18PJ ii. 236.

Thwarted in his aim to protect his family’s interest through Parliament, it may have been at this point that Herbert left Westminster. A kinsman, Henry Herbert*, who had been elected at the end of March to fill a vacancy in the other Monmouthshire seat, was to be the one Mr Herbert still in London by the end of the summer, the others having declared themselves royalists. William Herbert II was at the royal headquarters in the north by 25 June, when his elder brother wrote to Edward Hyde*, a beneficiary of Herbert patronage, mentioning that Pembroke was writing a letter to be sent to ‘my brother William’ to deliver to the king, which he had advised his father to do so that Charles ‘might perceive’ that William’s being there ‘was not displeasing’ to the earl.19CSP iv. 145, 148.

Lord Herbert implied that his brother was the vanguard of a more general drift to the king by his immediate family, but William remained the only one to join the king definitively, alongside his kinsmen William I and Richard. One of the William Herberts was noted as absent from the House on 19 July.20CJ ii. 626n. It is not clear what service this Herbert did the royalists, but, his namesake being by then dead, it was he who – still aged only 21 – signed the 27 January 1644 letter of MPs and peers assembled at Oxford requesting that the parliamentarian general Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, lay down his arms.21Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 574. When on 1 February Pembroke’s right to grant the office of custos brevium in the court of common pleas during the lives of his sons William and John was re-defined by Parliament to take account of the disqualification of other claimants, it was made contingent on the life of John only, with no mention made of William and his royalism.22CJ iii. 385a. However, it seems unlikely that his death had been announced. On 5 February he and Richard Herbert were among MPs disabled for deserting the House.23CJ iii. 389b.

Thereafter this Herbert disappears from the record. It was not until 11 September 1646 that a writ was ordered for a by-election to replace him on account of his death.24CJ iv. 667b. However, it seems probable that this had occurred quite some time previously. Plausibly, he was a victim earlier rather than later of the epidemics which plagued Oxford in 1644 and 1645. He was unmarried and apparently without a property settlement, his prospects presumably a casualty of war. His younger brother John Herbert* inherited his parliamentary seat.