HERBERT, Edward (1630-78)

Edward Herbert’s ancestors had been officials and Members of the Commons for the Welsh county of Montgomery, with their base in the castle overlooking that borough, Montgomery Castle. His grandfather was the courtier, diplomat, and philosopher Sir Edward Herbert^†, who in 1624 was created Baron Herbert of Castle Island [I], referring to the Irish property in co. Kerry which he held through his wife Mary Herbert, sole daughter and heiress of the Elizabethan adventurer Sir William Herbert^‡, who had ‘planted’ the English settlement in the furthest reaches of south-western Munster. In 1629 he was further made Baron Herbert of Chirbury, in recognition of the Herberts’ own estate of Chirbury near Montgomery. Herbert of Chirbury tried his utmost to remain impartial during the civil wars and he surrendered Montgomery Castle to Parliament’s forces in 1644 in order to preserve his library there and in London. Relations had long been bad between the baron and his elder son and heir, Richard Herbert^†. HLQ, v. 317–32. Herbert of Chirbury therefore made his grandson Edward, Richard’s eldest son, the chief beneficiary of his will. Richard succeeded as 2nd baron in 1648. He was an active royalist and was fined £2,574 by the victorious Parliamentary party and forced to dismantle Montgomery Castle. NLW, Powis Castle mss, D24/1/16–18; TNA, PRO 30/53/7/43, 62, 64; PRO 30/53/11/12, 16.

Edward Herbert, already the nominal chief beneficiary of the 1st baron’s will, succeeded to the title and the embarrassed estate upon his father’s death on 13 May 1655. Over the next few years he was involved in intensive work to shore up his estate in north Wales and in Ireland, where his grandmother’s estates in county Kerry had been severely damaged in the rebellion and ensuing Cromwellian conquest and were in danger of being confiscated by the land-hungry officers involved in that campaign. TNA, PRO 30/53/7/66–71; Herbert Corresp. nos. 244–7, 250–1, 253–6, 260, 262–3; Epistolary Curiosities, ed. R. Warner, i. no. 33.

Herbert’s father-in-law, Sir Thomas Myddelton^‡, was the Parliamentarian officer who captured Montgomery Castle in 1644 but his moderate Presbyterianism made him distrusted by the officials of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Herbert joined members of his Myddelton kin in the western rising for Charles II led by Sir George Booth (the future Baron Delamer). He later claimed that he raised a troop of 140 horse for the uprising but that they were ‘lost’ in the engagement and that he was subsequently ‘plundered and sequestered’. He reckoned that he lost £5,000 as the result of his participation in this venture. CSP Ire. 1663–5, p. 594; Herbert Corresp. no. 377.

Herbert was later to explain that poverty caused by his and his father’s adherence to the royalist cause, the depredations committed against his Irish estate during the 1641 rebellion and following wars, and the need to support his five sisters and two brothers prevented him from attending the king either at court or in Parliament. CSP Ire. 1663–5, p. 594. He was never an assiduous or frequent attender of the House. After first sitting in the restored House on 12 May 1660, he was present for a total of 42 per cent of the meetings of the Convention, during which he appears to have been almost inactive and was not named to any committees. On 28 Aug. 1660 he left the House and registered his proxy with William Wentworth, earl of Strafford, which was vacated when he returned to the House after the summer recess on 17 Nov. for a further 25 sittings.

Herbert quickly showed that his interests really lay in the governance of Wales and in the management of his influence there. He had already given evidence during the elections to the Convention of his strong electoral interest in Montgomeryshire, which he shared with his Catholic cousins, the Herberts of Powis Castle (at this time represented by Percy Herbert, 2nd Baron Powis) and the Vaughans of Llwydiarth. The head of this family, Edward Vaughan^‡, was arrested for royalism before he could stand, but both branches of the Herberts appear to have agreed with the Vaughans to return Vaughan’s nephew (and Herbert of Chirbury’s cousin) John Purcell^‡ for the county. Matters were less harmonious for the borough election, in which four separate boroughs were to have a voice in the selection of the candidate: the county town, Montgomery, controlled by Herbert of Chirbury; the ‘out-boroughs’ of Welshpool and Llanfyllin, under the influence of the barons of Powis; and Llanidoes, whose lords of the manor were the Lloyds of Berthllwyd. Herbert of Chirbury embarked on a campaign to have the outlying boroughs disenfranchised so that Montgomery could return Members. In April 1660 his brother-in-law Thomas Myddelton^‡ was returned for the borough constituency, withstanding a petition to the Commons from his principal rival, Charles Lloyd of Berthllwyd.

For the Cavalier Parliament, Herbert supported Purcell as knight of the shire and solicited Powis to support the candidacy of his uncle Sir Henry Herbert^‡, the master of the revels, for Montgomery Boroughs. TNA, PRO 30/53/7/76, 77. Instead Purcell made way for Vaughan, now released, to represent the shire and transferred his ambitions to the borough constituency. In March 1661 Herbert insisted that ‘choosing a burgess will not lie in their [the outboroughs’] power unless Montgomery, being county town, may choose their own’. Herbert Corresp. no. 287. At the election for the boroughs, two candidates were returned: Herbert’s man Purcell, with an indenture signed by ‘the mayor and bailiffs’ of Montgomery, and John Blayney of Gregynog, with one signed merely by ‘the burgesses’. The Commons determined, after a division, that Purcell, ‘being returned by the proper officer, should sit’. A later account of the Montgomery Boroughs constituency, arguing in favour of the rights of the outer boroughs, alleged that this was the only time that the burgesses of Montgomery elected a Member without the other boroughs. They did it ‘by surprise without notice to the other boroughs’, while Blayney, already an aged man, ‘would not spend his time nor money to bring it to question, and soon after the election died’.

Purcell died in 1665 and Herbert’s younger brother, Henry Herbert, only recently come of age, was returned on the family interest. This time, burgesses of all four boroughs signed the indenture returning him and, as a later account alleged, Herbert of Chirbury ‘declared our [the outboroughs’] right with much kindness, as he well might by way of retribution for our readiness to serve him’. Bull. of Board of Celtic Studies, xx. 294; HP Commons, 1669–90, i. 516–17; Herbert Corresp. no. 287. But by May 1676 the Privy Council had heard evidence that Herbert, having agreed as custos rotulorum to summon the quarter sessions to towns other than Montgomery occasionally, still refused to do so, to the point where a group of justices of the peace signed their own warrant for a sessions to be held in Llangellin before Herbert could issue his for Montgomery. CSP Dom. 1676–7, pp. 110–11.

Herbert’s ambitions stretched well beyond the county town. In September 1660 he strongly urged the necessity of re-establishing the Council of Wales and the Marches, and hoped that Henry Stuart, duke of Gloucester, could be solicited to take on the role of its president – ‘if it were not too bold a thing for me to attempt’. TNA, PRO 30/53/7/73. Unfortunately he put forward this project at exactly the time that the duke succumbed to smallpox and he deeply regretted the death of ‘so great a pillar of their Protestant religion’. Herbert Corresp. nos. 268–70; TNA, PRO 30/53/7/72, 73–74. At around the same time Herbert was made custos rotulorum of Montgomeryshire and was suggested as a deputy lieutenant for the six counties of north Wales, but it was not until December that his uncle Richard Vaughan, Baron Vaughan (better known as 2nd earl of Carbery [I]), was formally appointed lord lieutenant of all 12 counties of Wales and, a month later, lord president of the newly constituted Council of Wales. In January 1661, Vaughan commissioned Herbert as a deputy lieutenant and colonel of a regiment of militia horse for North Wales, as well as a captain of another troop of horse in Montgomery itself. NLW, Powis Castle mss, D24/1/21–22, 24–26, 29, 32–34.

Herbert quickly showed himself an enthusiastic deputy to his uncle in early 1661, when there were fears that Wales was acting as a haven for diehard opponents of the new regime such as Vavasor Powell. TNA, PRO 30/53/11/24; Herbert Corresp. nos. 277, 279, 282, 285–6. At the same time he added to his local roles in north Wales, being appointed, following his petition, as chief forester of Snowdon, chief constable of Conway Castle, and steward of the manors formerly belonging to Bardsey Abbey. Herbert Corresp. no. 269; CSP Dom. 1660–1, p. 522. He did reveal some resentment, and perhaps rivalry, at Carbery’s predominance in Welsh affairs and his continued absence from the region, when he wrote to a kinswoman in September 1661 concerning the lord lieutenant’s ‘long neglect of the king’s service’, although he did hold out the possibility of reconciliation if Carbery acted more ‘cordially in the king’s affairs’. Herbert Corresp. nos. 291, 293; NLW, Cal. of Wynn of Gwydir pprs. p. 367 (no. 2311). Herbert remained active in the governance and administration of north Wales over the following years and added to his offices that of custos rotulorum of Denbighshire in 1666. NLW, Powis Castle mss, D24/1/31, 38; HEHL, EL 8109. The Quaker Richard Davies had many encounters with him and portrayed him in his autobiography as a magistrate sympathetic to the peaceable Friends of the region. Montgomeryshire. Colls. vii. 144–6.

Herbert first took his seat in the Cavalier Parliament on 5 June 1661 and attended just under half of the sittings of the House before he left on 22 July, a week before Parliament was adjourned for the summer. PH, xxviii. 436–7; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/13, 20 July 1661. He was not named to a committee until 2 July, when he was added to the select committee considering the petition for the re-establishment of the Council of York – a matter on which he may have had strong views, considering his own advocacy of the Council of Wales. Thereafter he was named to a further three committees, including that on the militia bill, and was tipped to vote against the claim of Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, for the hereditary office of great chamberlain. Bodl. Carte 109, f. 317. Strangely, the manuscript minutes of the Journal suggest that on 20 July 1661 Herbert registered his proxy with John Manners, 8th earl of Rutland, even though Herbert would have been well aware that Rutland had been absent from the House for well over two months, having last sat on 10 May. PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/13, 20 July 1661. Rutland did not return to the House to exercise this proxy until 16 Dec. 1661. The proxy was vacated by Herbert’s attendance on 23 Jan. 1662; thereafter he came to slightly less than a quarter of the meetings, and was named to three committees.

In the following session, Herbert attended 26 meetings before he was formally excused from attending the House on 1 July 1663. Ten days after that, he registered his proxy with Anthony Ashley Cooper, Baron Ashley (later earl of Shaftesbury). Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, forecast that through this proxy Herbert would vote in favour of the impending impeachment of Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, initiated by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol. Ashley became Herbert’s constant proxy recipient over the following years: Herbert registered his proxy with him on 12 Mar. 1664, four days before the session of spring 1664, and again on 4 Dec. 1664, in the early days of the 1664–5 session. He did not assign his proxy at all for the Oxford session of October 1665.

Herbert also called upon Ashley to help him with his major project of these years, the granting of royal letters patent confirming his possession of the disputed lands of Castle Island in county Kerry. In the autumn of 1664, through Thomas Burton, his agent in Westminster, Herbert petitioned the king for a confirmation of his claim to the lands granted to Sir William Herbert in 1598, detailing the depredations and alienations committed on his land during the Irish rebellion and the sufferings of his family for their loyalty to the royalist cause in the civil wars. CSP Ire. 1663–5, pp. 593–6; CSP Ire. Addenda 1625–70, pp. 542–3; Bodl. Carte 145, ff. 210–11. Burton was distressed when the king referred the petition to the Irish lord lieutenant James Butler, earl of Brecknock (and duke of Ormond in the Irish peerage), which he feared, correctly, ‘would occasion much delay and perhaps prove hazardous’. Herbert already had reason to be wary of Ormond, as the duke had previously rebuffed, or simply ignored, Herbert’s request for a commission in the Irish army; moreover, Ormond had landed interests in Kerry that had already brought him into conflict with Herbert’s agents there. Bodl. Carte 31, ff. 600–1; Carte 159, ff. 97v–98.

Ormond, trying to manage the tight competition for Irish land under the Act of Settlement, insisted that Herbert should only be confirmed in the possession of land that his ancestors actually held in 1641, by which date much of it had been alienated or wasted. Herbert and Burton endlessly repeated that Herbert’s possession of the land originally granted by Elizabeth I to his great-grandfather had been reconfirmed by a judgment in the Irish Exchequer in 1657, and they further enlisted Ashley, already distinguishing himself by his antipathy to Ormond, to help them in their suit. The matter dragged on and in May 1665 Ashley presented a new petition to the secretary of state, Henry Bennet, Baron (later earl of) Arlington, who it was hoped would put pressure on Ormond to comply; ‘his [Arlington’s] interest is too prevalent for the duke to oppose’, Burton thought. Instead the matter was delayed again as Arlington referred the petition to the solicitor general, Heneage Finch, later earl of Nottingham. Finch reported in Herbert’s favour in June 1665 but the whole matter remained in abeyance throughout the remainder of 1665 and well into 1666, partly because of the disruption of the plague. By May 1666 the long process was reaching its positive conclusion, and Herbert wrote to Lord Chancellor Clarendon himself on 23 June 1666, urging him to see the patent through speedily. Herbert Corresp. nos. 307–9, 311–12, 314–17, 325–30, 332, 337–9; Epistolary Curiosities, no. 38; TNA, PRO 35/53/7/81.

Having finally received the confirmation of his title to the Castle Island lands, Herbert came to London, and to the House, for the first time in over three years, first sitting on 8 Oct. 1666, a week after he had been noted as ‘travelling to London’ at a call of the House. This time he stayed until the prorogation of 8 Feb. 1667, attending 70 per cent of the sittings, during which he was named to three select committees and was added to the committee for privileges. He may have been more than usually attentive because of the proceedings on the Irish cattle bill but he, unlike so many other peers with landed interests in Ireland, was not named to a single committee on this bill nor does his name appear in any of the protests against it. He does seem to have been concerned by it because after the prorogation he wrote to his brother-in-law Sir Richard Wynn^‡ on the subject. He told Wynn that the leading proponent of the bill in the House, George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, ‘has caused much discourse’, while his lieutenants in the Commons – Sir Robert Howard^‡, Sir Thomas Lee^‡, Sir Richard Temple^‡, and Edward Seymour^‡ – ‘walk London and the court as freely as any’, despite their role in promoting a bill that flew in the face of royal policy. NLW, Cal. of Wynn of Gwydir pprs. pp. 376–77 (no. 2391). On 25 Oct. 1667 Herbert registered his proxy once again with Ashley, who would have been able to use it during the proceedings against Clarendon, but this was vacated when Herbert returned to the House on 10 Feb. 1668. Thereafter he came to 80 per cent of the meetings until Parliament was adjourned on 9 May. He was named to three committees during this time.

From late 1669 his attention turned to Ireland again. No doubt heartened by the fall of his former antagonist Ormond and his dismissal from the Irish lieutenancy, Herbert decided to throw in his lot with the new lord lieutenant, John Robartes, 2nd Baron Robartes (later earl of Radnor), appointed in May 1669. In August Herbert was appointed to the Irish Privy Council. As he waited for Robartes to pass through Wales so he could accompany him to Ireland, he wrote to Sir Joseph Williamson^‡ expressing his ‘discontent and melancholy’ at having been unemployed for so long and reassuring the under-secretary that ‘I take more interest in business and public affairs than in hunting, hawking, or other country sports’. CSP Dom. 1668–9, p. 472. After he had arrived in Dublin with Robartes in early October he wrote again to Williamson, full of praise for the new lord lieutenant: ‘his person … is very taking, his conversation is most pleasing, his dexterity in business amazes’. Most importantly for Herbert, Robartes’ ‘resolution to go through with his methods as he purposed needs not death to help the poor expectant to places, that he shall think worthy of them. … I only hope I may deserve his favour for a civil or military office’. CSP Dom. 1669–70, p. 13.

Herbert appears to have been the only new member sworn to Robartes’ Privy Council but he did not receive any other major office in the Irish administration and his residence in Ireland was as brief as Robartes’ own tenure of the lieutenancy. CSP Ire. 1666–9, p. 774; Herbert Corresp. nos. 368–9. Herbert was back in Wales by May 1670, following Robartes’ replacement by John Berkeley, Baron Berkeley of Stratton, and was in London by May 1672, probably trying to consolidate his position with Berkeley’s own successor, Arthur Capell, earl of Essex. NLW, Cal. of Wynn of Gwydir pprs. pp. 396–400 (nos. 2558, 2573, 2584, 2589, 2606, 2607, 2609, 2658). He was encouraged by Essex’s appointment and returned to Ireland in October 1672, probably in the lord lieutenant’s retinue, for his first letters to his family in England and Wales are full of news of the ‘admirable lord lieutenant’s’ recovery from a dangerous illness. By early February 1673 he had proceeded west to his estates in Kerry, where he stayed to watch over his own interest for several months. His correspondence of this period reveals some of his political instincts, most prominently the standard fear of Catholicism shared by most Protestant English (or Welsh) owners of Irish land. In early 1673 he was encouraged by the stance against popery taken by the English Parliament. ‘I hope you are all satisfied touching the growth of popery’, he wrote to his brother-in-law Richard Herbert of Oakley Park in Shropshire, ‘that that will never hurt us [in Ireland] with the jealousy of its flow flourishing in England.’ Herbert Corresp. nos. 355–61, 363–9; Epistolary Curiosities, nos. 48, 50–57; NLW, Cal. of Herbert of Powis Castle Corresp. pp. 18–19.

Herbert was absent from the House between May 1668 and October 1673, a period that saw a shift in his political networks. Although the context is not clear, there appears to have been some sort of falling out between Herbert and Ashley in 1669, in which Herbert allied himself with his uncle John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater, against Ashley. Epistolary Curiosities, no. 43. From around this time, Bridgwater became Herbert’s chief political contact and proxy recipient, despite Herbert’s earlier grumbling that his family connection to Bridgwater had not brought him the advantages he had expected. HEHL, EL 8109. Herbert registered his proxy with his uncle on 30 Dec. 1672, over a month in advance of the session which began on 4 Feb. 1673. While he was at Castle Island in early 1673, he turned to both Bridgwater and Ashley, the latter now earl of Shaftesbury and lord chancellor, to defend him against attempts by his rivals in Wales – probably the new lord lieutenant, Henry Somerset, 3rd marquess of Worcester (later duke of Beaufort) – to have him removed as custos of Montgomeryshire, which suggests that some ties with Shaftesbury continued. Herbert Corresp. no. 359; NLW, Cal. of Herbert of Powis Castle Corresp. pp. 18–19.

Herbert was probably in London in August 1673, when he married Lady Elizabeth Brydges, a daughter of the 6th Baron Chandos. He also pursued his battle with Worcester over his position in Wales. TNA, PRO 30/53/7/109–10. His residence there allowed him to attend the House for the first time in many years – on 20 Oct. 1673, a prorogation day, and then for three of the four sittings of the brief session beginning a week after that. He lamented the sudden prorogation of 4 Nov. 1673:

There is a general consternation in the looks of all men but papists upon the proroguing the Parliament this second time. … I pray God direct the king that against the next sitting … he may give his people some ease in mind that we shall not be overwhelmed by popery. TNA, PRO 30/53/7/111.

At the same time he was disturbed by some of the more extreme stances taken by others and thought that ‘[16]41 to our great trouble and grief appears again in every action and circumstance almost’. He also commented on the general desire for a peace with the Dutch. When Parliament reconvened on 7 Jan. 1674 he attended just over two-thirds of the meetings of the session and was sufficiently concerned by its proceedings to send his brother-in-law an account of events in the House for 21–27 Jan., when the king announced to both houses the proposals for peace. TNA, PRO 30/53/7/105, 112, 125.

Herbert’s extended period managing his Irish lands had not ameliorated the dire financial situation caused (as he always claimed) by the expenses that his family had incurred through their loyalty to the crown. In February 1674, near the end of the parliamentary session, he petitioned Essex for the command of one of the troops of horse being raised for service in Ireland, as he was ‘sufficiently ashamed to be so often in Ireland without command’. Stowe 204, ff. 209–10. With no response from Essex, later that spring Herbert approached James Scott, duke of Monmouth, asking him to act as his patron to procure for him an additional grant of land in north Wales for 99 years, preferably at a low rent. If this request was denied, he would conclude that ‘after three generations’ service’ by his family he was being totally laid aside ‘as a useless and unworthy person’. Herbert Corresp. nos. 374–7. The request was declined, which may explain Herbert’s retreat back to Wales for another three years.

The author of the Letter from a Person of Quality, in praising those peers who voted and protested against the Non-resisting Test between 21 and 29 April 1675, included Herbert among the ‘absent lords’ who ‘ought to be mentioned with honour, having taken care their votes should maintain their own interest and opinion’ through their proxies with opponents of the Test. Cobbett, Parl. Hist. iv. 45 ; Browning, Danby, iii. 125. However, the official register is clear that Herbert only registered his proxy to Bridgwater (a leading opponent of the bill) on 29 May 1675, well after the important divisions on the Test had already passed. However, Herbert’s proxy with Bridgwater was registered well in advance of the following session, on 4 Oct. 1675, nine days before its commencement. A division list of the vote of 20 Nov. on whether to present the king with an address calling for the dissolution of Parliament shows that Bridgwater exercised Herbert’s proxy in favour of this motion but to no avail, as the motion was lost by two votes. HEHL, EL 8418.

Herbert returned to the capital to attend the House on the first day of the following session, 15 Feb. 1677, and came to 57 per cent of the sittings before he left on 12 Apr., shortly before the adjournment. He was present for only two meetings when the House resumed for a week from 21 May. Shaftesbury, incarcerated in the Tower from February for claiming that the Parliament had been automatically dissolved, marked ‘Herbert of Chirbury’ as ‘doubly worthy’ in his analysis of the political standing of the peerage. However, the name of Herbert’s brother, ‘Henry’, is written above ‘Edward’ next to ‘Herbert of Chirbury’ on Shaftesbury’s list and it is not immediately apparent to which brother the designation is meant to apply.

Herbert appeared again in the House on 28 Nov. 1678 but he attended only five meetings, as he died unexpectedly on 9 Dec. ‘of an apoplexy’. Add. 70087, Sir E. Harley to his wife, 10 Dec. 1678. Despite his apparent sympathy for ‘country’ positions, as demonstrated by his choice of proxies, Shaftesbury’s approving comments in his analysis probably referred to the childless Herbert’s successor, Henry Herbert, who had already established himself as a member of Shaftesbury’s circle and who, as 4th Baron Herbert of Chirbury, was an active proponent of ‘country’ policies and Exclusion. This younger brother quickly made up for his elder’s lack of political involvement in the House and in national politics.