HERBERT, Richard (c.1600-55), of Montgomery Castle, Mont. and St Julians, Mon.

For the son of Edward Herbert†, 1st Baron Herbert of Chirbury, renowned as a deist philosopher, details of Richard Herbert’s education are sparse. A possible sojourn at Eton hangs by the thread of a cryptic comment on the flyleaf of a friend’s book; his Oxford MA was to him – as to others – the gift of a grateful but impecunious king.26Eton College Register ed. Sterry; Al. Ox. In June 1625 he received a pass to travel abroad for three years, but returned within that time to marry a daughter of John Egerton, 1st earl of Bridgwater, who was becoming the pre-eminent peer in the marches and who was in time the president of its council.27PC2/33, f. 72; CP. Initially Herbert seems to have lived the youthful aristocratic life in town – in spring 1628 he was temporarily imprisoned in the Gatehouse – but he soon gained local office.28PC2/38, f. 101; Justices of the Peace ed. Phillips, 140-3, 357-9; C231/5, p. 36. During an epidemic in Shrewsbury in 1634, he was an active magistrate, procuring relief for the poor and infected.29Mont. Colls. vii. 136.

Herbert is said to have commanded a cavalry troop in Scotland when the king went to counter rebellion there in 1639, although the evidence for this is unclear and may derive from the commission he had received shortly before 14 March 1640, reputedly with ‘a thousand pound paid him to furnish him’.30Brilliana Harley Letters, 86. He was certainly in Ludlow in September 1639.31Pprs. of Capt. Henry Stevens, 48; Herbert Corresp. 101. In spring 1640 he was elected to Parliament on the family interest as a knight of the shire for Montgomery, a seat his father had occupied nearly 40 years earlier. He made no recorded impact on proceedings during the three-week session, perhaps because he was pre-occupied with military duties.32Brilliana Harley Letters, 90.

He was certainly in the north with the army over most of the following summer.33Brilliana Harley Letters, 100. On 18 August he wrote from York to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, explaining that his troop of horse had been directed to stay with foot regiments for the march to Newcastle, apparently to forestall expressions of discontent. He was ‘apt to credit [the Scots] strong, or else the design were too mighty for them, as it is now laid’ and was pessimistic about the state of the inexperienced and under-supplied English and Welsh soldiers, believing ‘there is not two companies in the army who have exercised with muskets duly laden, the king husbanding his powder to lose a kingdom’. Morale, he considered, had been disastrously eroded by the transition from ‘an offensive war’ to ‘the passive part’ as ‘the assertions of many the Scots would not invade’ had been ‘inverted’.34HMC Bath v. 286-7. Herbert distinguished himself at the battle of Newburn on 28 August, but by 23 September was in custody awaiting court martial at Great Langton, near Northallerton in north Yorkshire, contemplating ‘death or punishment’ for some unspecified misdemeanour.35HMC Var. ii. 257; SP16/467, f. 278. However, his application to the secretary of state, Edward Conway, 1st Baron Conway, secured a stay of proceedings and, although his cornet was eventually cashiered, Herbert seems to have emerged unscathed.36SP16/468, f.85; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 258.

In the meantime he had been again elected to Parliament, this time for Montgomery boroughs. In the chamber he joined the attorney-general Edward Herbert I* (soon to be knighted) as well as his distant kinsmen William Herbert I* of Cogan Pill, Philip Herbert*, Lord Herbert of Cardiff and William Herbert II*, the latter pair the two eldest surviving sons of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke. There is scope for confusion among the different Mr Herberts, but this one was perhaps, if no more visible, then slightly more distinctive in the record than the rest.

It was probably this Herbert – as one who had links with both the court and the army – or possibly William Herbert I who on 16 November reported to the House that Francis Cottington, 1st Baron Cottington, had told him that soldiers in London were to be discharged as soon as the money to pay them arrived.37Procs. LP i. 156. On 16 January 1641 he was given leave to go to the Tower to interview the imprisoned Sir George Radcliffe†, probably in connection with the latter’s role as a trustee for the family’s estates in Ireland.38CJ ii. 69a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 143; Herbert Corresp. 112. On the 29th he was among MPs from the army and the marches added to the committee preparing the charges against Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, for the specific purpose of investigating the commissions for levying forces granted (potentially illegally) to the recusants Henry Somerset, 5th earl of Worcester, and his son Edward Somerset, styled Lord Herbert.39CJ ii. 74b. In view of this, and of his connection with Strafford’s associate Radcliffe, Richard Herbert is the MP most likely to have voted on 21 April against Strafford’s attainder.40Procs LP iv. 42.

Like the other Herberts, Richard took the Protestation on 3 May.41CJ ii. 133a; Procs LP iv. 171. He may have been the Mr Herbert given leave of absence on 30 June or 16 July.42CJ ii. 194a, 214a; Procs LP v. 420, 427. Coming at the height of suspicions over the army plot, the latter date could bear some relation to the order on 22 July to disband eight troops of horse, including Richard Herbert’s.43CJ ii. 220a; LJ iv. 324b. Thereafter he was absent from the Commons Journal for nearly eight months, although it would presumably have been in his interests to continue attendance at Westminster as the Lords considered the extraction of the Herbert estates in Ireland from Radcliffe’s trusteeship (17 Aug.).44LJ iv. 367a; Herbert Corresp. 112. On 14 March 1642 Herbert was given leave to go into Ireland, plausibly on estate business, and yet remain an MP; a week later he was granted a licence to transport 10 horses there ‘for his own use’.45CJ ii. 477b, 493a. It is unknown when or if he returned to the House. In May his father was briefly imprisoned by the Lords for expressing doubt that ‘the king would make war upon the Parliament without a cause’, but, following his profession that ‘he meant no ill, neither to the king nor to [the] House’, was released and given leave to depart.46LJ v. 77.

Named by the king in July as a commissioner of array in Shropshire and Montgomery, Herbert almost certainly responded promptly.47Northants. RO, FH133. On 3 September he was commissioned by Charles at Nottingham as a colonel to raise a regiment of foot and was appointed governor of Bridgnorth in Shropshire.48 Pprs. of Capt. Henry Stevens, 48. Nine days later he was disabled from sitting in Parliament for his actions in the county, even before the House learned of the ‘very ill services done by Mr Richard Herbert in endeavouring to seize the magazine at Sir Percy Herbert’s castle’ at Powis.49CJ ii. 762a. Writing from Montgomery to a kinsman on the 13th he revealed the king had commanded him ‘to hasten the levies of my regiment and to make Shrewsbury my rendezvous’; ‘I have not yet beaten my drums, but shall this week, and in honour Shropshire must assist in their contributions’.50Mont. Colls. vii. 137. Later in the year he was apparently involved in the campaign around Hereford, while in the early months of 1643 he was at royalist headquarters in Oxford.51LJ v. 475b; Pprs. of Capt. Henry Stevens, 48; Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ed. Roy, i. 205; ii. 442. At the beginning of July, he escorted Queen Henrietta Maria on what must have been the final stages of her journey from Bridlington in Yorkshire to Oxford, but later in the month was in Worcester, where he may have stayed while his regiment left under a subordinate officer to participate in the siege of Bristol.52Warburton, Mems. Prince Rupert, ii. 237; Royalist Ordnance Pprs. i. 104; ii. 249, 480-1; Add. 18980, f. 90. Appointed governor of Ludlow at the end of September, in January 1644 he was again back in Oxford, where he signed the letter from the Parliament there.53Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ii. 293, 491; M. Toynbee and P. Young, Strangers in Oxford (1973), p. xx. As a result, his disablement from sitting at Westminster was confirmed on 5 February.54CJ iii. 389b.

Herbert cannot have been involved in proceedings at Oxford for long. Returning to the war in the marches and Wales, he was at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire later in February, and was appointed governor of Aberystwyth by Prince Rupert in April.55Pprs. of Capt. Henry Stevens, 24; Mont. Colls. xi. 362-4. Having received a commission in June for pressing more men in Montgomery, he was at Ludlow in early September and made governor of Newport, Shropshire, by the middle of October.56C231/3, p. 123; Add. 18981, f. 242; Herbert Corresp. 118. He was still there on 19 November when he addressed to Rupert a plea that the prince would spare a force to protect his Montgomeryshire estates from sequestration.57Add. 18981, f. 321. He had been assessed at £1,000 by the Committee for Advance of Money on 28 July and, although no proceedings had yet ensued, it was a forlorn hope at this juncture that Rupert could prevent erosion of his patrimony.58CCAM 435. Lord Herbert, who had kept aloof from the royal court, had surrendered Montgomery Castle in September in return for his liberty and the retention of his goods, but not without substantial losses from war.59Add. 18981, f. 67; LJ vi. 712b; Herbert Corresp. 119.

A new writ for the Montgomery seat was issued on 11 November 1646.60CJ iv. 719a. Richard Herbert petitioned to compound on 6 March 1647, claiming that his adherence to the king implied no desire to offend Parliament and that he had submitted ‘long since’ in a letter to Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, afterwards taking the Negative Oath. Somewhat disingenuously, he put down the delay in coming forward to his residence far from London and the consequent slow relay of information. Orders allowing him to retain for the time being his lands in Monmouthshire were made at Goldsmiths’ Hall and by the county committee on 23 March and 14 April 1647, but intelligence of his complicity in the royalist risings of 1648 threatened to remove any hope of sympathetic treatment. 61CCC 1682; Herbert Corresp. 126. Herbert was evidently back at St Julians by 18 June, when Oliver Cromwell* sent him a stark message that he had ‘good report of your secret practices against the public advantage, by means whereof that arch-traitor, Sir Nicholas Kemeys† ... did surprise the castle of Chepstow’ and gave him ‘this plain warning ... that if you harbour or conceal’ any of the rebels ‘or abet their misdoings, I will cause your treasonable nest to be burnt about your ears’.62Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 616. Shortly afterwards Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert (who called on support from the wider Herbert clan) offered to renounce in favour of his son (who was already at least £7,000 in debt to him and others) damages awarded in compensation for the slighting of Montgomery Castle, but the death on 5 August of the father left the son more exposed.63LJ vi. 712b; CCC 1682; Herbert Corresp. 124, 131. On that very day, the Derby House Committee issued an order to ensure that the new Lord Herbert of Chirbury, as a disaffected person, would not be permitted to take possession of the remains of the castle.64CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 232, 236.

Although in 1649 Herbert was included among the unpardonable Welsh delinquents, he eventually paid only £1,000 in fines, the rest being covered by the public debts due to his father and the compensation due to him for the demolition of Montgomery Castle following an order of 11 June 1649.65CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 179-80, 189, 487, 536; Herbert Corresp. 131-6; CCC 1682. In 1651 the militia commissioners for north Wales certified that he had furnished two armed cavalrymen for the campaign against the invading Scots.66Herbert Corresp. 137. Three years later the protector, noting the losses he had already sustained in Ireland, as well as his debts and the need to provide for his younger children, permitted him to repossess his estate there and proceed with plantation, while the Irish administration recommended that he be allowed arms to defend it.67Herbert Corresp. 139-40. Shropshire informers implicated him in the royalist conspiracies of early 1655, but their stories of rural house-parties may have betokened nothing more than hunting.68TSP iii. 202, 282.

Herbert died on 13 May 1655 and was buried in Montgomery church.69Mont. Colls. vii. 139; CP. If the terms of his will made on 30 January were observed, this was ‘done according to the rites and customs of the Church of England in the late reign of Charles the first of blessed memory’. The considerable library left by Herbert’s father was to be ‘carefully preserved’ and amplified on the advice of (among others) royalist clergymen Jeremy Taylor and Robert Waring. Yet the estate of which his widow was executrix was burdened by a string of debts great and small in England, Ireland and Wales, listed in an annex to the probate grant and amounting to nearly £6,000.70PROB11/248/422. Herbert was succeeded in turn as 3rd and 4th Baron Herbert by his two surviving sons, Edward and Henry, who were both implicated in the rebellion of Sir George Boothe* in 1659. After the Restoration Henry Herbert sat in Parliament for Montgomery boroughs, but both brothers died childless.71HP Commons 1660-1690. However, the marriage of their sister Florence to her cousin Richard Herbert of Dolguog preserved the family stock and standing in Montgomeryshire.72Mont. Colls. vii. 139.