HERBERT, Sir William

Herbert was ‘the first Welshman since the Edwardian conquest to achieve a high position in English politics’.16 C.D. Ross, Edw. IV, 75-76. In the 1460s, through the patronage of Edward IV, he gathered into his own hands a concentration of land and office in South Wales to compare with that acquired there by Hugh Despenser the younger in the 1320s.17 J.R.S. Phillips, Edw. II, 508. The foundations of his great career were laid by his father, Sir William ap Thomas, who, from relatively modest origins, became a leading figure in south-east Wales.18 For his career: R.A. Griffiths, Principality of Wales, i. 147-8; Gwent County Hist. ii. 262-3; Kent, 1-10; Thomas, 4-12. Indeed, in a minor key, Sir William’s career was as remarkable as that of his son. Knighted with Henry VI in 1426, he held a succession of offices in the administrations of the magnates of the Welsh march and of the Crown, notably those of treasurer of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester’s county of Pembroke, and deputy justiciar of South Wales.19 Griffiths, i. 147-8, 150. Significantly for the career of our MP, he also established a close relationship with Richard, duke of York: by the early 1440s he was one of his councillors and chief steward of his Welsh lands.20 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 17, 240; Glamorgan County Hist. iii. 624n. The wealth that came with his multiple offices financed a very significant acquisition of property. Through his first wife, Elizabeth, heiress of Sir John Bluet of Daglingworth (Gloucestershire), he acquired an interest in the lordship of Raglan, and, after her death in 1420, he bought that lordship and other nearby property, including a large manor at Tretower from her son, James, Lord Berkeley.21 Kent, 8, 491-3; Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle ed. Wells-Furby (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc.), ii. 661. Both Raglan and Tretower were held of the duke of York: Kent, 22n. At Raglan he made his home and began the building of the castle that his son was to develop into a great edifice.22 A. Emery, Greater Med. Houses, ii. 631-5.

Herbert was the eldest son of Sir William by his second marriage to Gladys Ddu, and was thus of Welsh descent through both his parents.23 The Welsh poet, Lewis Glyn Cothi, composed an elegy to her very soon after her death. He describes her as ‘the star of Abergavenny – Gwladys the happy and the faultless’, and claims that her funeral was attended by 3,000 people: Poetical Works of Lewis Glyn Cothi ed. Jones and Davies, i. 2; T.J.L. Prichard, Heroines of Welsh Hist. 437, 441. On his father’s death in the spring of 1445, the bulk, if not the entirety, of the inheritance Sir William had built up by purchase descended, subject to his mother’s interest, to him rather than his elder half-brother, Thomas, who was probably illegitimate.24 Kent, 7n.; William Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 341; Bardney, ii (1), 9; O. Morgan, Ancient Mons. Priory Church Abergavenny, 50-51. The value of this inheritance, making no allowance for his mother’s interest, was probably about £150 p.a., enough to make him one of the wealthiest Welsh gentry although well below the income of the leading English gentry families.25 The principal properties of that inheritance, Raglan and Tretower, were each worth about £40 p.a., to which sums are to be added the unknown value of William ap Thomas’s own inheritance, principally the manors of Llantilio Crossenny and Wyesham, and his other lesser purchases. For the value of Raglan: Kent, 399. The greater rewards available to one who would make a career in England may help to explain why, from their earliest appearances in the records, both he and Thomas had adopted the name of ‘Herbert’ in preference to the Welsh patronymic.26 H.T. Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses (1998 edn.), 46. Fanciful, but contemporary, claims were made for their descent from Herbert Fitzherbert, chamberlain of Hen. I: Llyfr Baglan ed. Williams, 13; Stowe 669, f. 31. When sued in 1458 for debt as his father’s administrator, he was described as ‘William Herberd alias William ap Thomas, once of Raglan, knight’: CP40/789, rot. 207. Seemingly they were, in a way that their father had not been, ready to transcend their Welsh origins in search of advancement.

Thomas Herbert took advantage of their father’s connexion with Humphrey, duke of Gloucester and earl of Pembroke, to find a place in the duke’s household, and only narrowly escaped execution on the duke’s fall in 1447.27 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 498, 539; Kent, 11-12. The MP’s own early career is less clear. It is an open question as to whether he is to be identified with the namesake who appears as one of the esquires of the hall and chamber in the lists of members of the royal household from 1446 until the failure of the lists in 1452.28 E101/409/16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. It was this Herbert who in February 1448 shared a reward of 40 marks for travelling on the King’s business in France, and who in the spring of 1451 went on a diplomatic mission to Burgundy. He was also, in all probability, the servant of the King’s half-brother, Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, to whom, by letters patent dated at London on 1 Oct. 1453, Richmond granted an annuity of £10.29 E404/64/121; 69/189; E403/769, m. 12; 796, m. 3; C66/490, m. 22. Interestingly, John Nanfan*, who in 1457 offered surety for our MP, was also on this diplomatic mission to Burgundy: CPR, 1452-61, p. 360. Since William Herbert the MP was a knight by this date and is not described as such in either the grant or its later ratification, there are grounds for thinking that the household esquire was another man. On the other hand, it is odd that if the household servant was not the MP, he should have disappeared in the records between 1453 and that ratification in 1460. Further, a connexion with the earl of Richmond would explain why Herbert was one of those knighted alongside the earl at Greenwich in January 1453, and if he did have such a close connexion with the Crown in the first years of his career it would explain the apparent division of his political loyalties in the crisis of 1459. In short, on the available evidence, the matter is beyond resolution.

What, however, is not in doubt, is Herbert’s participation in the last act in the English occupation of Normandy. It is not known when he first went to France. He is often erroneously identified with a namesake, a chapman, who in February 1440 had letters of protection revoked for failure to depart for Calais.30 DKR, xlviii. 332; CPR, 1436-41, p. 374; Evans, 46; Kent, 18. None the less, it seems that he was in arms as early as the autumn of that year, when a William Herbert is recorded as a man-at-arms in the retinue of John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, and the same man went on to take part in Somerset’s disastrous expedition of 1443.31 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Clairambault mss, 200/88; E101/54/5. If our MP is to be distinguished from the household esquire, then it may be that this Herbert was the latter, but it is significant here that the MP had a connexion with the Beauforts through his father, who was deputy to the earl’s brother, Edmund, count of Mortain (and earl of Dorset), as steward of the duchy of Lancaster lordship of Monmouth.32 Somerville, 647; DL37/8/75. Thomas Herbert succeeded his fa. as Dorset’s dep. in the stewardship: DL37/13/64. Further, as our MP was certainly serving in France in the desperate years of the late 1440s, the case for identifying him with the soldier of the early 1440s is strengthened. In March 1448, in company with a famous Welsh soldier, Matthew Gough, he witnessed the contentious surrender of Le Mans to the French, and in the autumn of the following year the two Welshmen found themselves serving as joint lieutenants of the castle at Carentan. They were obliged to surrender it to the French at the beginning of the campaign that was to see the end of English rule in Normandy. In April 1450, they both fought at the battle of Formigny, the final English defeat there. Herbert was captured, but no details are known of his ransom. He was, in any event, quickly released.33 Griffiths, Hen. VI, 503; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), 625-6, 630. This early military experience no doubt served as a useful preparation for his more successful campaigning in his native Wales in the 1460s.

Herbert’s known absence in France raises a doubt as to the date of 10 Aug. 1449 given in an abbreviated seventeenth-century copy of the contract for his marriage, but, if that date is an error, his marriage was certainly made at around this time.34 Since Herbert is styled an esquire the marriage must have been made in 1452 or before. The match was a very significant one in two respects: it tied Herbert to one of the leading gentry families of the Welsh march and strengthened his connexion with the retinue of the duke of York, of which he was already a part. It is an indication of the standing his family had already acquired that the bride’s father, Sir Walter Devereux, was prepared to pay as much as 500 marks as a portion, and provide meat and drink for Herbert and as many of 40 of his men when the wedding took place at his home at Weobley.35 Thomas, 104.

During these years of military service Herbert began to take over some of the administrative roles his father had once exercised for the magnates with interests in South Wales. By the autumn of 1449, he was steward of the lordship of Glamorgan and soon afterwards he held the same office in the lordship of Abergavenny, both of which were held, on disputed titles, by Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, in right of his wife, Anne Beauchamp. He was also, from before January 1450, steward of the duke of York’s lordship of Usk and Caerleon, as his father had been before him.36 M.A. Hicks, Warwick, 49; Glamorgan County Hist. iii. 624; Kent, 22. Herbert’s activity in the service of these two great lords went further than merely the discharge of office. When, in the autumn of 1451, Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, besieged his local rival William, Lord Bonville*, in the castle of Taunton, Herbert accompanied York in a successful mission to raise the siege and restore order. Although there is no direct evidence that he went on to offer the duke active support in the abortive Dartford rising of the following February, the general pardon granted to him on 10 Oct. 1452 implies that he did.37 Griffiths, Hen. VI, 576; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 91; Letters and Pprs. ii (2), 770; CPR, 1452-61, p. 17. He certainly supported his other patron, the earl of Warwick, in the earl’s dispute with Edmund Beaufort, elevated to the dukedom of Somerset in 1448, over the lordship of Glamorgan. In the summer of 1453, as the earl’s sheriff there, he and his maternal kinsmen, the Vaughans, joined the earl’s constable of Cardiff, John Throckmorton II*, in making ‘greet assemblees and Rout[es] of peple’ to prevent Beaufort taking control. On 19 July they were summoned before the King to explain themselves, but their aim was achieved and they appear to have escaped punishment.38 E28/83/32; Hicks, 84; Glamorgan County Hist. iii. 196. As sheriff of Glamorgan, he held a ct. there on 8 Aug. 1453: Cartae Glam. ed. Clark, 1195A.

If Herbert was the household esquire, these must have been difficult years for him, as the two lords, first York and then Warwick, drifted into open opposition to the Lancastrian regime. His knighting at the Tower of London in company with the King’s half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, on 5 Jan. 1453, however, suggests he retained credit with that regime even after the Dartford rising and that that credit was not jeopardized until he involved himself in the disorders in Glamorgan.39 Griffiths, Hen. VI, 699. From thenceforward, with the possible exception of a brief period late in 1459, he followed the lead of the duke of York. It is likely that Herbert fought for the duke and Warwick at the first battle of St. Albans on 22 May 1455, and he may also have sat in the Parliament summoned to meet in the wake of the Yorkist victory. The Herefordshire indenture is lost, but he and his father-in-law Devereux are probable candidates. It may be significant here that Herbert had recently acquired lands in that county sufficient to qualify him for election. In December 1454 Uriah, son of Thomas de la Hay*, had secured licence to alienate his moiety of manors at Wellington and neighbouring Adzor, not far from the Devereux family home at Weobley, to Herbert, and the transfer of ownership was completed by a fine levied very shortly before the Parliament assembled.40 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 215, 246; CP25(1)/83/56/65.

Whether or not Herbert was an MP in 1455, he was soon to offer the duke much more robust support. When, in the wake of his brief second protectorate, York was driven into the political wilderness by a resurgent court party, Herbert and Devereux, by then established as the leaders of the duke’s men in the Welsh march, responded violently. Their actions were driven by both a desire for private vengeance and the need to protect their lord’s and their own local positions. The spark came early in March 1456 when Herbert’s maternal half-brother, Walter (or Watkin) Vaughan of Bredwardine, was killed in Hereford by a townsman, Thomas Glover. Anxious for immediate vengeance, a Yorkist gang headed by Herbert, Devereux’s son Walter Devereux II* and the Vaughans, entered the city on 15 Mar., intimidated the local j.p.s into taking an indictment of murder against six citizens, the most important of whom was a dyer, John Glover, no doubt a kinsman of the murderer, and then promptly hanged the indicted.41 KB27/791, rex rot. 1; A. Herbert, ‘Herefs. 1413-61’, in Patronage, Crown and Provinces ed. Griffiths, 111; D.F. Evans, ‘Murder in the Marches’, Procs. Harvard Celtic Colloquium, xviii/xix. 42-72.

Such open flouting of the processes of the law was serious enough from the government’s point of view, but the disturbances of the following summer were very much more so. A private purpose gave way to a public one, and a new Yorkist rising seemed to threaten. On 10 Aug. Herbert and Devereux led some 2,000 men in the taking of Carmarthen castle, imprisoning its keeper, the earl of Richmond, before marching to Aberystwyth, where they held sessions as if they were the lawfully constituted authority. If the MP is indeed to be identified with Richmond’s annuitant, this was a curious way of earning his annuity. Herbert had, however, left such ties, if such they were, behind him. His actions represented a reassertion of the duke of York’s weakening lordship. The duke had been appointed as constable of these two castles in the aftermath of his victory at St. Albans, but had failed to secure effective control due to the pretensions of Gruffydd ap Nicholas, deputy justiciar of South Wales, who had exploited the lack of direct royal lordship there to win considerable influence. At the end of York’s second protectorate the Crown sought to bring Gruffydd to heel by dispatching the earl of Richmond to west Wales; and it was this that provoked the Yorkist reaction in August 1456.42 Griffiths, Hen. VI, 779-80; Storey, 179-80; CPR, 1452-61, p. 245.

For Herbert and Devereux, whether or not they were acting on York’s explicit orders, their open defiance of royal authority was, in its unfortunate timing, a highly dangerous undertaking. The duke’s influence at the centre of government had survived, albeit in diminished form, for a few months after his loss of the protectorship, but by August he faced political exile in response to the growing influence of the hostile queen. He was, in short, incapable of protecting his men from the consequences of their actions. Both Herbert and Devereux appeared before the King during the great council at Coventry in the following September. Although committed to the Tower of London, Herbert escaped before he could be confined there. According to later indictments, he was at Abergavenny on 25 Oct. seeking to raise an army, and on the following 10 Mar. 1457 the Crown offered 500 marks for his capture.43 KB27/791, rex rot. 1; CCR, 1454-61, p. 158.

At the beginning of the following month the King himself came to Hereford because, in the dramatic words of Benet’s chronicle, ‘unus rebellis regi Nomine Willelmus Hareberd miles Vallicus fere destruxit illam civitatem’, presumably a reference to the events of a year before.44 John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Misc. xxiv), 218. On 2 Apr. local juries laid various treason and other indictments against Herbert, Sir Walter Devereux, Devereux’s son, Walter Devereux II, and their adherents before royal commissioners, headed by the duke of Buckingham and earl of Shrewsbury. Remarkably, however, Herbert was quickly able to win rehabilitation. William Worcestre, writing from London on 1 May, reported in a letter to John Paston* that, with King and the commissioners still at Hereford, ‘it ys seyd Herbert shall com ynne, and apper at Leycester before the Kyng and the lordes, his lyfe graunted and godes, so he make amendys to theym he hath offended. Manye be endyted, som causelesse, whych makyth Herbert partye strenger; and the burgeys and gentlemen aboute Herford wille goo with the Kyng wyffe and chylde but a pease be made or the Kyng part thens, for ell Herbert and hys affinite wille acquit after, as it ys seyd’.45 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 172. Benet’s chronicle provides a similar account, although one in which Herbert did not escape quite so easily. It says he submitted and was pardoned, but that he was imprisoned, first in the Tower and then at Windsor, to answer appeals made against him. One of these appeals can be found in the legal records. In Easter term, which began on 4 May, John Glover’s widow, Agnes, appealed him as one of the principals in the murder of her husband.46 John Benet’s Chron. 218; KB27/784, rot. 85. But, if Herbert was imprisoned, he was soon released, certainly long before process on the appeal was exhausted. On 22 May he was restored to the possession of seven tuns of Gascon wine that had been seized as a forfeiture by the Crown at Bristol, and on the following 7 June he sued out a general pardon.47 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 353, 360. For his involvement in the wine trade: Gwent County Hist. ii. 289-90.

Herbert’s rehabilitation was followed by an attempt to restore order to Herefordshire. In February 1458 the King’s former confessor, John Stanbury, bishop of Hereford, and the earl of Shrewsbury, then treasurer, acted as arbiters between him, the Devereux and their Yorkist allies, on the one hand, and a strong Lancastrian faction in the county, headed by Sir John Barre* and Thomas Fitzharry*, on the other.48 Longleat House, Devereux pprs. DE/Box I/15. It is not known whether any award was made, but it may be that one of its terms was that Agnes Glover should abandon her appeal. She defaulted in Hilary term 1459 and Herbert and several of his followers were allowed to plead pardons in King’s bench against both the King’s suit on this appeal and the indictments of 1457.49 KB27/784, rot. 85; 791, rex rot. 1.

The leniency with which Herbert was treated by Queen Margaret’s regime in the late 1450s, taken together with his passivity in the 1459 campaign, so marked in its contrast to his violent promotion of his master York in 1456, has led to speculation as to the exact nature of his political loyalties. According to almost everything known of his career, he should have been one of the principal figures in the Yorkist ranks at the rout of Ludford Bridge on 12 Oct. 1459. Yet he was absent. Further, according to one interpretation of the sometimes cryptic poetry of Lewis Glyn Cothi, that poet identifies him, in the febrile climate of these years, as a supporter of Lancaster not York.50 Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 61. Such an identification is consistent with the reward that came to him after Ludford Bridge: on 5 Feb. 1460, described as a ‘King’s knight’, Queen Margaret’s regime confirmed him in the offices he had held under the duke of York and the earl of Warwick.51 CPR, 1452-61, p. 549. There was some confusion over these grants. One of the offices confirmed to Herbert on 5 Feb. was that of steward of the earl of Warwick’s ldship. of Elfael (Radnor), an office which, the day before, had been entrusted to Hugh Payn*: CPR, 1452-61, p. 545. On 5 Mar., when Herbert was empowered to appoint officers in the ldships. of which he was steward, Elfael was omitted, presumably in rectification of this error: CPR, 1452-61, pp. 574-5. Another contradictory grant was, however, made soon afterwards when Henry ap Griffith, an associate of Herbert and York, was granted one of Herbert’s stewardships, that of Ewyas Lacy: CPR, 1452-61, p. 554. As late as the following 26 June, the very day a Yorkist army landed in Kent, he and his half-brother, Thomas, had general pardons enrolled on the patent roll. Either they had been suspected of new crimes in the interest of York, or, more probably, the pardons were simply the last failed investment in their loyalty by the fading Lancastrian government. Herbert was probably simply biding his time, judging, after a fortuitous rather than calculated absence from the defeat at Ludford, that he would better serve York if he maintained his local position instead of sharing his lord’s exile.52 CPR, 1452-61, p. 594; Thomas, 19-20. The possibility remains, however, that, at least for a brief period, his Yorkist loyalties had wavered. If he was the former household servant, it is perhaps not surprising that this should have been so; but, even if he were not, he did have at least one family tie with a leading Lancastrian, for his brother-in-law, Sir Henry Wogan, was a councillor of Jasper Tudor.53 D.E. Lowe, ‘Council of the Prince of Wales’, Bull. Bd. Celtic Studies, xxvii (2), 280; Griffiths, Principality, i. 150.

Such a conflict of loyalties aside, Herbert returned to his master’s colours as soon as hope dawned again for York. On 17 Aug. 1460, five weeks after the invading Yorkists had defeated the Lancastrians at the battle of Northampton, the new government commissioned him and his brother-in-law, Walter Devereux, to subdue rebellion in Wales. No doubt both men greeted their lord as, having returned from his exile in Ireland early in September, he made his way through the Welsh marches before arriving in London on 9 Oct. Indeed, it is likely that they accompanied him, for on 4 Oct. they had been elected to represent Herefordshire in the Parliament scheduled to assemble two days before the duke’s arrival in the city.54 PPC, vi. 304-5; Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 71-72; C219/16/6. The election was conducted by Devereux’s brother-in-law, (Sir) James Baskerville. Only four attestors, all obscure men, are named in the indenture. As MPs they must have heard about the duke’s entry into the Parliament chamber on 10 Oct. and his bold but ill-judged attempt to take the King’s place there. More mundanely, on 18 Nov. they secured a lease of the weirs at the fishery of Monmouth, displacing the former lessee, Sir John Barre – a modest foreshadowing of the much greater rewards that were to follow.55 DL37/53/136. If he is to be identified with the late earl of Richmond’s annuitant, then his annuity was confirmed during this session: CPR, 1452-61, p. 627.

After the dramatic first session of the Parliament ended on 1 Dec., Herbert returned to the Welsh marches instead of going north with the duke of York. He thus fought not at the terrible Yorkist defeat at the battle of Wakefield, where the duke met his death, but rather, in the first days of February, at the earl of March’s victory at Mortimer’s Cross, near Leominster. He appears to have played a significant part in that victory: Jasper Tudor attributed his defeat to ‘March, Herbert and the Dwnns’.56 Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 84. He then travelled with the earl to London, and on 3 Mar. 1461 at Baynard’s Castle he was among those who proclaimed the young earl King.57 Worcestre, 204; Letters and Pprs. ii (2), 777. It is probable that he went on to fight at Towton a few weeks later, as Devereux is known to have done.

Soon afterwards Herbert received the most significant promotion of his career to date. The new King summoned his first Parliament on 23 May to meet on the following 6 July, but after the demands of campaigning forced a postponement until November he took the opportunity to afforce the Lords in the interests of the new regime. Five new barons were summoned, among whom were Herbert and Devereux (summoned as Lord Ferrers).58 J.E. Powell and K. Wallis, House of Lords, 508, give the figure as six, but one of those they name, Humphrey Bourgchier*, had first been summoned to the last session of the previous Parl.: John Benet’s Chron. 229. An additional honour soon followed, for on 21 Mar. 1462 he was elected as a Garter knight.59 CP, ii. 543; Reg. Order of the Garter ed. Anstis, 175.

As might be expected of a Garter knight, Herbert’s service to the new regime was predominantly military. Such service was probably his personal preference because that it is where his skills lay. To the Welsh bard Guto’r Glyn, who described him as ‘the Hector of Gwent’ and ‘a second Arthur’, he was a great soldier, and he was certainly an experienced one.60 E.A. Rees, Life of Guto’r Glyn, 138. But that he should undertake the military defeat of the Lancastrians in Wales was also determined by circumstance. Parts of that country remained, until the fall of Harlech castle in 1468, a centre of continued Lancastrian resistance, and Herbert was the natural leader of its suppression. In part, that role fell to him through the accidents of political geography. The lordships of the march and South Wales were in the hands of either the King (through forfeiture or inheritance) or lords, in Stafford, Talbot and Mowbray, disqualified from an active role by minority. The exception was the earl of Warwick’s lordships of Glamorgan and Abergavenny, but it is clear that the new King preferred to rely, in Wales, on Herbert rather than the earl.61 Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 71; Ross, 76. The King’s thinking in this regard is apparent in what, in hindsight, was an unfortunate reordering of royal patronage early in the reign. On 7 May 1461 he confirmed a grant made to the earl of Warwick, in the previous November, of the custody of the Stafford lands during the minority of the heir. Yet, only four days later, he modified this grant, transferring the valuable lordship of Newport into Herbert’s custody, and in the following September he appointed Herbert steward of all the other lands, which, theoretically at least, remained in Warwick’s custody.62 CFR, xix. 287; CPR, 1461-7, p. 13; Glamorgan County Hist. iii. 198. There have been contradictory interpretations of these seemingly conflicting grants. It has been argued, on the one hand, that it was no more than a ‘a rational division of responsibilities’ between the two lords. Warwick had ‘no time to spare for Welsh affairs’,63 Hicks, 256-7. and, in any event, he would have recognized that Herbert had recommendations, as a local Welsh leader, that he did not share. Herbert’s Welsh ancestry meant that he ‘could appeal with effect to Welsh sentiment’ in a way that no other Yorkist lord could, and he was at the centre of a large kinship network through his maternal kinsmen, the Vaughans, and the Devereux kin of his wife.64 Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 74. On this interpretation the grant of the Stafford wardship to Herbert was readily accepted by Warwick, who had himself done much to advance the Welshman’s early career. The counter and stronger argument is that this grant was offensive to the earl and that it marked the beginning of a personal feud between the two men that was to undermine Edward IV’s rule.65 Ross, 71.

At the end of September 1461 Herbert, with his trusty ally, the new Lord Ferrers, took the Lancastrian stronghold at Pembroke castle, which surrendered as soon as it was put under siege by its captain, (Sir) John Skydemore*. They then travelled north, defeating a Lancastrian force, commanded by Jasper Tudor and including their old adversary, Thomas Fitzharry, on 16 Oct. at Twt Hill, just outside the walls of Caernarvon.66 C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 202; Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 85-86; PROME, xiii. 46. Herbert was present at Westminster for at least part of the parliamentary session. On 9 Dec. he was named to a parliamentary committee of nine lords assigned to negotiate with the merchants of the Calais staple. More interestingly, in discharge of a promise he had made to Skydemore on the surrender of Pembroke, he gave evidence before the Commons of the terms on which he had surrendered, and so prevented the inclusion of the Lancastrian captain in the ‘comyn bylle of atteyndre’.67 PROME, xiv. 65-68. It is not, however, entirely clear that Herbert was behaving in a straightforward fashion here. In accepting the surrender, he and Devereux had promised, at least on Skydemore’s account, that he would not only have his life, goods and lands, but also that they would ‘labour to the kynges highnes … that he shuld have better than his seid lyvelode’. What is not in doubt is that Herbert, invoking the power given to him in the previous May to receive submissive rebels, issued his letters patent to Skydemore receiving him into the King’s ‘grace and pardon’.68 SC8/29/1435A. Yet, in doing even this, Herbert was acting ultra vires: his letters patent cite the power of pardon given to him in a commission of 13 May, but carefully avoid reference to the letters of four months later that had specifically exempted Skydemore from this power of pardon. In any event, Herbert’s promise did not save Skydemore from the forfeiture of his lands, and on 20 Feb. 1462 those lands were granted in tail-male to Herbert’s brother, Sir Richard. This is open to various interpretations. Either Skydemore falsely claimed that Herbert had offered him something more than only his life for the surrender, or Herbert’s promise was repudiated by the Crown. The grant to Sir Richard, however, shows that Herbert was not unhappy to see Skydemore’s lands forfeit.69 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 77, 372.

Herbert did not return to his duties in Wales immediately after the prorogation on 21 Dec. 1461. He was still in London in February 1462, when the King sent him, in company with John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, and Ferrers, into Essex, to arrest, as rebels, John de Vere, earl of Oxford, and three of his sons. But he was again campaigning in his home territory in the following summer. He organized the slighting of the castle of Carreg Cennen, taken by his brothers, Sir Richard Herbert and Sir Roger Vaughan of Tretower, from the Lancastrian sons of Gruffydd ap Nicholas; and he brought a considerable force to the great sessions at Carmarthen to restore the peace there. At the end of the year he was campaigning in another sphere, taking a leading part in the campaign to reduce the northern strongholds of the Lancastrians.70 John Benet’s Chron. 232; R.A. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, 28; Kent, 489; SC6/1224/6, 7; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xxviii), 157. His exploits in this campaign are described in eulogistic terms by Lewis Glyn Cothi: ‘his frame ablaze on prancing steed, and his eyes glistening like glowing embers’, he was ‘the terror of the enemy’.71 Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 89; Thomas, 29. Thereafter, as the Lancastrian threat diminished, so did the pace of military activity. On 22 Apr. 1463 Herbert even found time to attend the Garter celebrations at Windsor, but this was the only occasion he did so.72 Reg. Order of the Garter, i. 176. Yet Harlech castle stood unconquered as a reproach to the Yorkists and particularly perhaps to Herbert. In the autumn of 1464, he began a siege of the castle, for which the King assigned him the considerable sum of £2,000.73 Scofield, i. 338, 423. Some, perhaps much, of the £2,000 had still to be paid to him in Apr. 1466: E403/835, m. 1. The effort failed, but was the prelude for the major and savage campaign undertaken a little less than four years later. Then the need to take the castle, thought by some to be impregnable, was brought into sharper focus when, in late June 1468, Jasper Tudor landed in North Wales and, rallying local Lancastrian support, attacked Denbigh. Herbert quickly arrayed an opposing force, forced Jasper to flee and, on 14 Aug., finally took the surrender of the garrison at Harlech. All this was achieved with great brutality. Guto’r Glyn, writing in the immediate aftermath of the surrender, refers to the ‘total war and slaughter’ which Herbert’s expedition brought: ‘Your traces [of burning] are over the rocks, you made Eryri [Snowdonia] ploughed land’. And although he wrote in praise of Herbert, he also urged him to mercy: ‘be not Savage, losing fire on men’.74 Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 99-101; A. Goodman, Wars of the Roses, 52-53: Rees, 130-1. The campaign was expensive in treasure as well as blood. Herbert declared before the King and council that he had raised and spent, from his own resources and those of his friends, a total of over £5,500 in capturing the castle. And, by the following November, the Crown had yet to discharge about £3,168 of this sum.75 E403/840, mm. 4, 9, 12; E404/74/1/129.

That Herbert could and should shoulder such heavy financial burdens on the Crown’s behalf was the result of the grants of office and lands that made him ‘a virtual viceroy in Wales’.76 Ross, 76. On 8 May 1461, three days before the controversial grant to him of the custody of the Stafford lands, he had been appointed chief justice and chamberlain of South Wales and steward and master forester of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire.77 CPR, 1461-7, p. 7; Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 81. On 12 Aug. he was named as steward of Monmouth and the Three Castles (that is, Whitecastle, Grosmont and Skenfrith), again, as in respect of the Stafford lands, in succession to the earl of Warwick.78 DL37/30/216; Somerville, i. 648. With these important offices went land, vital to Herbert both to underpin the position that was being created for him in Wales and the march and to give him the income necessary to support the rank of a peer. Fortunately for him, the same circumstances that made him the natural leader of the Yorkists in Wales also ensured that the new King had, through forfeiture and minority, the local lands necessary to reward him. The most important of these forfeitures were the estates of Jasper Tudor’s forfeited earldom of Pembroke, principally consisting of the lordships of Pembroke, Tenby, Caldicot and Cilgerran, and on 3 Feb. 1462 they were granted to him in tail.79 CPR, 1461-7, p. 114; DL37/33/37. To these, more contentiously, were added in the same grant and also in tail, the castle and manor of Goodrich. This had not been forfeited, but was in royal hands due to the minority of John Talbot, son and heir of the earl of Shrewsbury who had been killed on the Lancastrian side at the battle of Northampton in July 1460. As such, it should not have been alienated in this way, and, to make matters more difficult, it had earlier been committed to the earl of Warwick.80 A.J. Pollard, ‘The Talbots’ (Bristol Univ. Ph. D. thesis, 1968), 89-90; CPR, 1461-7, p. 339. Nine days later, Herbert’s local position was strengthened yet further. He was granted the keeping, for the term of 20 years, of the royal castle and lordship of Haverfordwest, at an annual rent of 100 marks; and the custody of the Mowbray lordship of Gower (with Swansea and Kilvey) to hold during the minority of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk (b.1444), at an annual rent of 200 marks, far below the real value.81 CPR, 1461-7, p. 119. Norfolk had royal licence to enter his lands in Mar. 1465, but Herbert then farmed the ldships. from him at an even lower rent of 160 marks. It has been estimated that, between 1465 and 1468, when he purchased the ldships., Herbert made a profit of £250 p.a. from this arrangement: L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 205-6. On the same day he also undertook to pay as much as £1,000 for the custody and marriage of Henry Tudor, son and heir of Edmund, earl of Richmond. If Herbert had been a servant of the earl, he must have known the boy, the future Henry VII, from birth.82 CPR, 1461-7, p. 114.

In June 1463 Herbert received three further important grants. His power was extended into North Wales when the offices of constable of Harlech castle, then still in Lancastrian hands, and chamberlain and justice of the county of Merioneth were committed to him; his landed influence was extended south across the Bristol Channel with the grant to him and his issue of the extensive Luttrell estate in north Somerset, centred on Dunster and Minehead; and his standing enhanced when his lordships of Crickhowell, which he had recently purchased, and Tretower, parcels of the earldom of March, were created as a separate marcher lordship to be held in chief.83 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 268, 271, 286; H.C. Maxwell-Lyte, Hist. Dunster and Fams. Mohun and Luttrell, 124. Thereafter the grants to Herbert diminished, but they did not cease. In March 1465 his lordship of Raglan was raised to marcher status, and he was accorded the additional privilege of a weekly market at Raglan and two fairs yearly.84 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 425-6. In September 1466, as part of the arrangements contingent on the marriage of his son and heir to Mary Wydeville, he was granted in tail-male a third of the castle and lordship of St. Briavels (Gloucestershire), held by Mary’s mother, Jacquetta, in dower from her first husband, John, duke of Bedford, and now surrendered for his benefit; his term of 20 years in the lordship of Haverfordwest was extended to a grant in fee; and he was awarded the reversion of the manor of Kilpeck, lately granted to his kinsman, William Herbert, in the event that this William died without male issue.85 CPR, 1461-7, p. 533. Under the terms of the contract, Earl Rivers had undertaken to do his best to persuade the King to make these three grants. The grant of St. Briavels was contentious in that both the earl of Warwick and the duke of Clarence had claims under earlier royal grants: VCH Glos. v. 256. At the same time his interest in the offices of chief justice and chamberlain of south Wales and various stewardships and constableships in royal property and castles there was extended from life to tail-male.86 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 526-7. The local dominance of the Herberts was, in short, to be extended beyond his lifetime.

In the following year Herbert’s responsibilities in North Wales were extended beyond Merioneth. On 28 Aug. 1467 he was granted for life the stewardships of Denbigh and Montgomery, and, much more importantly, the chief justiceship of North Wales. This latter office had been held since early in the reign by the earl of Worcester, but his decision to depart for Ireland to take up the office of deputy-lieutenant there provided an opportunity for a new grant. A little over a year later Herbert was raised to the same status as Tiptoft, when, on 8 Sept. 1468, to mark his leadership of the campaign that led to the capture of Harlech, he was promoted to the earldom of Pembroke.87 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 22, 136; Letters and Pprs. ii (2), 788; CChR, vi. 225. Soon after, his near monopoly of office in Wales was completed by life grants, in November, of the master forestership of Snowdon and the constableship of Conway castle, and in the following April of the chamberlainship of North Wales, held, since July 1461, by William, Lord Hastings.88 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 113, 154; Thomas, 42.

A position of such local dominance could not be achieved without denying other interests, and one clear narrative of the first reign of Edward IV is the growing alienation between Herbert and one of those who felt his interests threatened by the patronage bestowed upon him, namely the earl of Warwick. In the 1450s the two men had been on good terms, and Herbert owed his early advancement as much to the earl as he did to Richard, duke of York.89 Interestingly, despite the dispute between them, Herbert remained Warwick’s sheriff of Glamorgan at least into the late 1460s, when, as sheriff, he was still in receipt of a fee of 70 marks p.a. He was also still Warwick’s steward of Abergavenny, but the fee due for that office was not paid: Kent, 410. However, his promotion to a dominant role in South Wales meant that he superseded his former mentor in the custody of the great Stafford and Talbot estates there and in the stewardship of the duchy of Lancaster lordship of Monmouth. This, as noted earlier, probably marked the beginning of their alienation one from the other, and the process gathered momentum in the late 1460s. A significant factor here was Herbert’s association with the court faction developing around the new queen’s family, the Wydevilles. On 20 Mar. 1466 he entered into a contract for the marriage of his son and heir to the queen’s sister, Mary, and the marriage itself took place at Windsor castle on the following 20 Jan.90 Herbert agreed to settle Dunster and the other Luttrell lands, said to be worth £296 p.a., on the couple in fee tail with lands worth a further £104 on consummation. In return, Earl Rivers was to pay a portion of 2,500 marks, modest in comparison with the large jointure offered, and give his assistance in gaining the royal grants which were duly made in the following Sept.: Thomas, 104-6; 15th Cent. Eng. ed. Chrimes, Ross and Griffiths, 92-93. None of the portion had been paid by Herbert’s death: Thomas, 108. According to one chronicler, from the moment of its making, Herbert’s influence at court increased, and, in this context, it is not surprising that Warwick should now have seen his interests directly threatened by Herbert, whose ambitions were no longer confined to Wales.91 Croyland Chron. ed. Pronay and Cox, 114.

The principal vehicle of that threat, real or imagined, was the marital ambitions Herbert had for his daughters. The marriage of the Herbert heir into the Wydevilles was bad enough from Warwick’s point of view, and, according to the Annales, he and other magnates secretly disapproved of the knighting of the groom and his creation as ‘Lord of Dunster’ which is said to have taken place at the time of the wedding.92 Letters and Pprs. ii (2), 786; Hicks, 259. Much more objectionable to him, however, was the marriage made on the previous day, also at Windsor castle, of Herbert’s daughter Margaret to a royal ward, Thomas Talbot, Viscount Lisle.93 For the dates of these marriages: E101/412/2, f. 13. Later, in Oct. 1467, Herbert paid 300 marks for the custody of certain of Lisle’s lands: CPR, 1467-77, p. 49. Since the groom was the grandson and heir of Margaret, countess of Shrewsbury, the eldest of the three aunts of the half-blood of Warwick’s wife, he could be seen as a rival claimant to the Beauchamp inheritance that the earl held in his wife’s right.94 M.A. Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence, 39. Warwick also had reason to fear the consequences of a match seemingly in agitation. In 1467 the young Henry Percy, heir to the earldom of Northumberland, was transferred from the Tower of London to Herbert’s custody, and there is every reason to suppose that Herbert already intended to marry his new charge to one of his daughters, for such a marriage did indeed take place in 1472.95 Ibid. 58-59. Percy was in Herbert’s household by 18 Nov. 1467, when our MP was allowed the 100 marks p.a. due from the farm of Haverfordwest so that that sum could be put to the keeping of the young heir: SC6/1225/2, m. 9; 1236/11, m. 1. Such a marriage would have been the natural prelude to the reversal of the Percy attainder. For Warwick that conclusion would mean the loss of the Percy lands that he and his brother, John, who had been created earl of Northumberland in 1464, had been given, and the restoration of a powerful rival to Neville hegemony in the north. Another proposed match, that of Herbert’s ward, Henry Tudor, to his daughter Maud potentially threatened the interests of Warwick’s ally, the King’s younger brother, George, duke of Clarence: Henry was his father’s heir to the earldom of Richmond, which formed part of the young duke’s endowment.96 Hicks, Clarence, 39.

It is an open question whether Herbert intended that Warwick should find himself threatened by these marriages or whether he was simply seeking, as any lord was entitled to do, the best marriages for his children. There is, however, some evidence that he felt some personal animosity towards the earl, and that that animosity was already apparent before he began making such ambitious plans for his daughters. Indeed, ironically, that hostility may have originated in the thwarting of an earlier scheme for the marriage of his young heir. According to the Great Chronicle, Herbert ‘sore hatyd therle off warwycke by cause he wold nott suffer hys sone and heyre to mary wt theyre off ye lord haryngton and bonvyle’.97 Gt. Chron. London ed. Thomas and Thornley, 208. The heiress allegedly involved was the earl’s niece, Cecily, daughter of William Bonville, Lord Harington, who had been slain in the Yorkist cause at the battle of Wakefield. If such a rejection did indeed take place, it must have been before the Wydeville marriage was contracted in the spring of 1466 and when Cecily was yet a mere girl.98 In the event she did not marry until 1474 – to a husband, Edw. IV’s stepson Thomas Grey, to whom Warwick, had he still been alive, would probably have taken even greater exception: CP, iv. 418.

After the Wydeville marriage, Herbert’s actions clearly identified him with a court party that operated in opposition to Warwick’s interests. On 8 June 1467, while Warwick was away on embassy in France, Herbert was among those with the King when the earl’s brother, George, archbishop of York, was peremptorily removed from the chancellorship. Three days later, at the great tournament between Anthony Wydeville, Lord Scales, and the Bastard of Burgundy, Herbert bore the weapons before the combatants and so, it must have seemed to Warwick, identified himself with the pro-Burgundian foreign policy of the court party in opposition to his pro-French stance.99 CCR, 1461-8, p. 456; L.S. Woodger, ‘Hen. Bourghier’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1974), 107; Ross, 110; Scofield, i. 417; Excerpta Historica ed. Bentley, 205, 210. In the following autumn Herbert despatched to the King a captured messenger sent by Margaret of Anjou to the Lancastrian garrison at Harlech and this messenger, in the King’s presence, accused Warwick of having treasonable sympathies with the Lancastrian queen.100 Scofield, i. 434; Hicks, Warwick, 264-5. Against this background, Warwick can hardly have been blamed for believing that his former protégé meant him harm.

Although the two men were seemingly reconciled at a meeting at Coventry in January 1468, that reconciliation proved only superficial.101 Scofield, i. 443-4. In the summer of 1469 Warwick engineered a rebellion in the north, under the nominal leadership of one ‘Robin of Redesdale’ but led in reality by the earl’s cousin, Sir Henry Neville, and Sir John Conyers, his steward at Middleham.102 Hicks, Warwick, 275. As the rebels marched south, Herbert set out with a strong Welsh force to oppose them. Guto’r Glyn describes the great feast held in the courtyard of Raglan castle on the eve of Herbert’s departure and his advance to Gloucester. He also expressed his own fears of what might be to come: ‘I fear lest [Herbert] be the victim of treachery. The people of England have harassed our leader, and he is the object of deep malice’.103 Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 161.

These fears proved well founded. At Edgcote, near Banbury, on 24 July, the royalist army was defeated. The reasons for that defeat have been much debated, but one of the principal ones was dissension, ostensibly over billeting arrangements, between Herbert and Humphrey Stafford IV*, earl of Devon, the leader of the Yorkist force brought from the West Country. The quarrel caused Stafford to withdraw his men, leaving the Welsh to face the rebels alone.104 For modern accounts of the battle: ibid. 102-10; Goodman, 68-69; Ross, 130-2; Thomas, 56-72. For its re-dating to 24 rather than 26 July: W.G. Lewis, ‘Exact Date of the Battle of Banbury’, Bull. IHR, lv. 194-6. No doubt this was not the precise form of the ‘treachery’ Guto’r Glyn had imagined as Herbert set out, yet he saw it as sad vindication of his earlier fears. His master, he claimed, was the object of English jealousy and hatred.105 Rees, 138. Certainly, by his death, Herbert had come to be seen by the poets as the representative of the Welsh nation; ‘the great ear’ of Wales in London according to Lewis Glyn Cothi, and ‘the man to make Wales one’ in the words of Hywel Dafi.106 Ibid. 133-4. For Herbert as a patron of Welsh poetry: Gwent County Hist. ii. 289-94.

Such a reputation was no doubt of value to Herbert in the suppression of the Lancastrians in Wales, but may have bred distrust of him in England. One chronicler reported the rumour that he ‘cogitabat subuertere regnum Anglie et eam totaliter spoilare’; and another gleefully noted that the defeat of the Welsh at Edgcote was a refutation of the ancient prophecy, which they foolishly believed, that they would one day conquer the English.107 C.L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 356; Ingulph’s Chron. of Croyland Abbey ed. Riley, 446-7; Rees, 141. Yet, while Guto’r Glyn depicts that defeat largely in terms of the ‘venomous envy’ of the English towards his master, he also places some of the blame upon what he sees as his hero’s pride and arrogance. Lewis Glyn Cothi echoes the point in his elegy to another fatality of the battle, Herbert’s half-brother, Sir Thomas Vaughan: for him, ‘it was through heedlessness that the field was lost’.108 Rees, 150; Poetical Works of Lewis Glyn Cothi, i. 16n.

Yet whatever the precise reasons for the loss, the consequences were clear. Herbert and his brother, Sir Richard, were captured, and many Welshmen of note, ‘the cream of the aristocracy of South Wales’, fell on the field. ‘Let us hasten to the north to avenge our country. My nation is destroyed, now that the earl is slain’, concluded Guto’r Glyn.109 Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 108. The Herbert brothers were executed at Northampton on 27 July, seemingly in the presence of Warwick. Presumably the latter justified this arbitrary act to himself in terms of the danger Herbert’s pretensions posed to his own interests, but it may also have been an act of revenge for the death, perhaps by execution, of Sir Henry Neville before the battle.110 Ibid. 107, 109-10; Ross, 131-2; E. Hall, Chron. ed. Ellis, 274.

Herbert died a very wealthy man with an income only exceeded by men of ducal rank and Warwick himself. The surviving receiver-general’s accounts for his estates in the late 1460s allow an accurate estimate to be made of his landed wealth. Between May 1465 and May 1468 liveries of cash from his estates to his receiver-general amounted to about £2,400 p.a., to which were to be added royal fees that at the end of his life amounted to over £500 p.a. Further acquisitions made in the last year of his life increased this revenue, and there can be no doubt that, at his death, his income was well in excess of £3,000.111 Kent, 397, 420-1. Part of this wealth he put to the creation of a residence suitable for a man of comital rank. He reworked the castle at Raglan begun by his father. The resulting structure, still largely extant, has been described as ‘finer than any surviving contemporary royal or baronial work’.112 Emery, ii. 632. Great attention and expense were devoted to the extensive domestic apartments, which were of the most modern design with large windows, but the needs of defence were not ignored. The castle’s most striking feature, its great hexagonal keep, was strongly defensible and could be isolated from the rest of the castle in time of emergency.113 Ibid. ii. 197.

Herbert’s great wealth came largely from royal grants. In the receiver-general’s account for 1465-6, of the six lordships that yielded him more than £100 p.a. each, five were held by royal grant and two of these, the Stafford lordship of Newport and the Mowbray lordship of Gower, were his only temporarily, the one during minority and the other on lease.114 Kent, 397-8. Only Crickhowell in Brecon, which he had purchased in June 1462 from Thomas Pauncefoot*, was free from the danger of resumption.115 For the purchase of Crickhowell: ibid. 397, 402n; J. Biancalana, Fee Tail and the Common Recovery, 387-8; CCR, 1461-8, p. 149. In the 1440s Thomas’s father, Sir John Pauncefoot†, had been involved in a dispute with the duke of York over the tenure of Crickhowell, from whom the ldship. was held, but there is no reason to suppose that this had anything to do with the later sale. Given the vulnerability of royal grants to resumption and changes in political circumstances, this was an unsatisfactory situation, and prudence dictated that Herbert use his new wealth to add to his patrimony by purchase. To this end Crickhowell was an important acquisition, but towards the end of his life he made a much more important one from the young duke of Norfolk. The duke’s lordships of Chepstow and Gower were ideally situated to augment Herbert’s burgeoning estate in South Wales, and of only peripheral concern to the duke himself, for his principal estates lay in East Anglia. The acquisition was thus a natural one, particularly since Herbert had leased the lordships both during the duke’s minority and after he came of age. It was, however, a complex one, in part because the lordships were burdened by the dower interests of the duke’s mother and grandmother, and in part because Herbert determined to raise much of the purchase price not from his own cash resources but from the debts due to him from the Crown. On 12 Sept. 1468, only four days after his elevation to the earldom of Pembroke, the Crown licensed his acquisition of the lordship of Chepstow in fee, and the change of ownership of both lordships was made secure by three common recoveries in the following Michaelmas term. The arrangements were completed in December: the King alienated various duchy of Lancaster manors in East Anglia to the Mowbrays and granted them various liberties and franchises in Framlingham and elsewhere; in return, Herbert agreed to cancel 4,075 marks (£2,716 13s. 4d.) of the debt of just over £3,168 due to him from the Crown for the Harlech campaign.116 CPR, 1467-77, p. 112; C260/151/25; Moye, 205-9; CChR, vi. 223-5.

One aspect of this acquisition was dubious, at least if a petition presented in the Parliament of 1485 is to be taken at face value. An additional part of the purchase price, aside from the duchy of Lancaster manors, was the manors of Kettleburgh (Suffolk) and Sisland (Norfolk), which Herbert is said to have bought from Thomas Charles for 1,850 marks. In 1485, however, Charles’s two daughters and heirs told a very different story: they said their father had been imprisoned in the Tower of London on the charge of receiving treasonable correspondence and Herbert caused the King to make the surrender of the manors the price of his release.117 PROME, xv. 141-6; Moye, 207. Although there is evidence to contradict this claim, it raises the general question of Herbert’s character.118 In a Chancery petition of the early 1470s Charles’s widow gave a different account, at least in respect of the manor of Kettleburgh, alleging fraud against the duke of Norfolk’s councillor, Thomas Hoo II*: C1/39/32. Other allegations of harshness and impropriety were made against him. In a petition presented in Chancery soon after his death, it was alleged that, in the early 1460s, he forcibly entered two small manors in Magor and Redwick, once the property of Sir John Cressy*, and then sent for Thomas Wylde, whom Cressy had chosen as his heir to these properties, to come to his castle at Raglan on a false promise of restoration. There he threatened the unfortunate Wylde that he would not return alive to England unless he agreed to sell the manors. A deed enrolled on the close roll gives some support to this account: in July 1462 Wylde confirmed Herbert’s estate in the manors and quitclaimed their right.119 C1/39/18-19; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 149-50. Later it seems a compromise was reached: on her death in 1486, Herbert’s son and heir, William, earl of Huntingdon, owed Sir John Cressy’s widow £240, perhaps as compensation for the surrender of the manors: CCR, 1485-1500, no. 106: CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 618. In a letter of the late 1470s John Trevelyan* complained that, ‘by the sterynge’ of Lord Herbert, his wife had been disseised of her inheritance by Alice, dowager duchess of Suffolk.120 Trevelyan Pprs. i. (Cam. Soc. lxvii), 81-82. Further, a complaint made by Elizabeth, widow of Sir James Luttrell, implies that Herbert contrived false findings in an inquisition to deprive her of her jointure.121 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 522-3; CIMisc. viii. 406, 449. A payment of £1 8s. made by Herbert’s bailiff at Chilton Luttrell to the escheator of Som. (and allowed in the acct. for 1465-6) implies there may be merit in the complaint: Kent, 229.

There is also evidence that Herbert was an exploitative landlord. In his hands in the mid 1460s the lordship of Goodrich yielded about £350 p.a., twice as much as when the lordship was in royal hands in the early 1480s, and the lordship of Newport provides a similar example of profitability.122 Pollard, 97; Rawcliffe, 124. It would, however, be wrong to place too much reliance on the posthumous complaints, for they were frequently merely the distorted narratives of the legally dispossessed, and the new profitability of lordships in Herbert’s hands may be a function of efficiency rather than exploitation.123 One of the complaints against Herbert certainly falls into this category: C1/225/48; Kent, 264, 496. For his efficiency as a landlord: Kent, 286-9. Less easy to dismiss, however, as evidence of a harsh and ruthless character are his own actions. Even by the standards of a violent age, the merciless revenge he exacted in Hereford for the murder of his half-brother in 1456 was an extreme act, and the devastation he brought to North Wales in the final Harlech campaign appears to have gone far beyond the dictates of military necessity. Interestingly, in a chronicle emanating from the monastery at Ely, he is condemned as ‘oppressor et spoliator ecclesiasticorum et aliorum multorum per annos multos’ whose death was deserved; and another, admittedly written from the perspective of the Nevilles, as ‘homo crudelis … paratus ad omne crimen’.124 Three 15th Cent. Chrons. 183; Kingsford, 356.

Before embarking on his last campaign, Herbert had taken the precaution of making a will. Dated on 16 July, this reveals much about his family and his wealth.125 Unfortunately the will is known only from a later, slightly confused, copy: Thomas, 107-9. He made modest landed provision in tail-male for his two legitimate younger sons, Walter and George, with the proviso that, if one or both happened to marry an heiress with lands worth 200 marks p.a., then he or they were to have the lands only for life.126 Walter, a knight of the body to Hen. VII, enjoyed a notable career and married, in 1499, Anne, sis. of Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham: Kent, 52-57; Rawcliffe, 173-4. For Guto’r Glyn, he rather than his ineffectual er. bro. was our MP’s true heir: Rees, 154. A proviso of a different sort attached to a bequest to his wife: she was to have the valuable lordship of Chepstow, but only on condition that she remained a widow. He left instructions that his daughter Maud should be married to Henry of Richmond, and that his daughter Anne to another of his wards, Edmund Malefaunt.127 In the event Anne married John, Lord Grey of Powis (b.c.1460), whose wardship and marriage Herbert had bought from the Crown for 800 marks in 1467: CPR, 1467-77, pp. 25, 62; CP, vi. 141. For her friendship with Margaret Beaufort: M.K. Jones and M.G. Underwood, King’s Mother, 162. A total of 2,500 marks was to be devoted to the marriage of his three other unmarried daughters, Cecily, Katherine and Mary.128 In 1475 Mary was contracted to Thomas, son and heir-apparent of William, Lord Berkeley, but Thomas’s death as a boy prevented the marriage: Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle, i. 564. Cecily married John, son and heir male of Ralph, Lord Greystoke, in 1485: CP, vi. 201n. In 1490 Katherine married, as his 2nd wife, George Grey, earl of Kent: CP, vii. 167. His eldest son, whom he described as ‘Dunster’, was, on coming of age, to have £1,000 in cash and £1,000 of plate. On 26 July, as he awaited execution, he amplified and added to these provisions. He reiterated the condition made in respect of his wife in his earlier will: ‘Remembre your promise to take ye ordre of Wydowhod’ so that she might be better placed to perform his will and advance their children. He left £20 to the Greyfriars where his body should lie after his execution, presumably the Greyfriars in Northampton, ‘my body be sent for home in alle hast secretely be maister Leison and certeyn freres with him’. Plate worth £30 was to be sent to his ‘kepers her’, presumably his gaolers. Leison (who is probably to be identified with Thomas Leyson, rector of Grafton Regis, the home of the Wydevilles) was to have an annuity of ten marks to pray for his soul; and two further priests were to be employed to pray before the Trinity in the church of Llantilio (presumably Llantilio Crossenny), near Raglan, for his soul and the souls of all those slain ‘in this feld’ for two years. His almshouses, at an unspecified location, were to have ‘asmuche livelode’ as necessary to provide for six poor men with another to serve them. He concluded, ‘Wife pray for me and take the said ordre that ye promised me as ye had in my life my hert and love’.129 PCC 28 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 216). For Leyson: Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, ii. 1144.

Herbert’s body was duly brought back to the marches for burial, and, although in his final will he had chosen internment in the priory of Abergavenny near his parents’ tomb, he was buried in the abbey of Tintern. There his tomb survived until its destruction at the Dissolution.130 J.R. Kenyon, Raglan Castle, 11; Rees, 152-3. The great position he had built up for his family, at least as represented by his legitimate descendants, did not survive even so long. His son and heir, the second earl, was a minor until 1475 and thereafter proved himself ineffectual. For that reason, or else for more general political reasons, Edward IV, in his second reign, chose to entrust the rule of Wales to a regional council under the nominal leadership of the prince of Wales, rather than upon the Herberts. In 1479 the unfortunate second earl, weighed in the balance of competence and worth and found wanting, was obliged to surrender his earldom of Pembroke and its lands to the prince in exchange for a much poorer reward, the title of earl of Huntingdon and some duchy of Cornwall lands in Somerset and Dorset.131 Lowe, 293-4. At his death in 1491, he left a sole daughter as his heiress, and most of the family lands were lost to her descendants by Charles Somerset, earl of Worcester.132 CP, xii (2), 846-50. Curiously, however, the Herberts did regain the earldom of Pembroke in the person of another William Herbert†, son and heir of one of our MP’s illegitimate sons, Richard Herbert of Ewyas.133 The Commons 1509-58, ii. 341-4; CP, x. 406-9.