HERBERT, James (1623-77), of Westminster and Tythrop House, Kingsey, Bucks.

Like his elder brothers, James Herbert left Oxford to complete his education with a period abroad. Departing after 21 October 1641 with permission to stay away for three years, he probably missed the opening stages of the civil war.29PC Reg. xii. 193. By the time he was appointed a commissioner for arrears of taxes in London in June 1645, he had probably been back for some time.30A. and O. In spring 1646 his father sent agents including his steward William Stephens* and former secretary Michael Oldisworth* to Gloucester to negotiate a match for James with the granddaughter and potential heir of imprisoned royalist Sir Henry Spiller† (who had been captured at Hereford in December), holding out the carrot of intervention on Spiller’s behalf with the Committee for Compounding.31Sheffield Archives, EM1355; Phillips, Civil War in Wales, ii. 286. Meanwhile, the earl manoeuvred to ensure that James would be returned alongside Edmund Ludlowe II* in the Wiltshire by-election, taking the senior seat in accordance with his higher status. Ludlowe recalled Pembroke promising that despite James’s youth, ‘yet he would undertake that he should vote honestly for the commonwealth’.32Ludlow, Mems. i. 133.

Appointed on 3 June commissioners under the ordinance for exclusion from the sacrament, Herbert and Ludlowe took the Covenant together on 24 June.33CJ iv. 563a, 586a. The former was the second Mr Herbert in the House: the presence, in addition to his elder brother Philip Herbert*, Lord Herbert, of his kinsman Henry Herbert* and from October 1646 also of his younger brother, John Herbert*, was a potential source of confusion. However, since Henry obtained leave on 17 September to go into the country and had no special interest in Wiltshire, there seems little doubt it was James who a week later was a teller with Presbyterian leader Denzil Holles* against war party leader Sir Arthur Hesilrige* in favour of putting the question for that county’s gentlemen receiving the responsibility to oversee the disbanding of forces locally.34CJ iv. 671b, 675a. On 3 October he presented to the Commons a petition against Sir Henry Spiller.35CJ iv. 682b. Although disputes over his prospective marriage settlement had emerged in June and July, Herbert none the less married Jane Spiller on 3 August, and now complained that Sir Henry, by this time a prisoner in the Tower, proposed to compound for his delinquency without making any provision for his granddaughter on the ground that he had withdrawn his consent to the match.36Sheffield Archives, EM1355; CJ iv. 682b; Add. 31116, p. 568; Harington’s Diary, 41. The case was referred to committee, but it took a chancery action the following year to obtain a decree requiring Spiller to execute a settlement, and he died in 1649 without complying.37HMC Lords iii. 127.

Given failure to distinguish between Herberts in succeeding references in the Journal, it seems plausible to ascribe appointments on 21 December 1646 and 6 April 1647 to committees discussing measures to enfranchise County Durham and Newcastle to the more experienced Member, Henry Herbert, yet the significance of both for the Scottish alliance of the Westminster Presbyterians raises the possibility that one of Pembroke’s sons, more probably James, was a nominee of the Presbyterian faction.38CJ v. 21b, 134a. On 25 February 1647 the three Herbert brothers were given leave to go to Holdenby Hall, where the earl was ‘lying ... very sick’, having gone there in the hope of helping to broker a peace with the king, who was confined there.39CJ v. 97b. Both James and Henry appear to have been at Westminster in early April. James was specifically named on the 2nd to the committee addressing the contentious issue of the London militia, a power which challenged the New Model army.40CJ v. 132b. However, it was probably most likely to have been Henry who with Sir John Danvers* was a teller against Presbyterians Sir Philip Stapilton* and Sir William Lewis* as the latter successfully prolonged the command, independent of the New Model army, of Rowland Laugharne† in south Wales (8 Apr.).41CJ v. 137b. By the same token, it is most likely to have been James who joined Sir John Clotworthy* in an unsuccessful attempt to endorse the Lords’ decision to put forward the entire revenue of the Committee for Compounding as security for a loan from the City of London (1 May).42CJ v. 159b.

While the evidence is patchy, it is possible to detect at this stage a clear difference of allegiance between, on the one hand, Pembroke’s three sons (although perhaps with differing degrees of enthusiasm), and, on the other, Henry Herbert. The latter seems likely to have been absent from the House over the summer of 1647. Crucially, it was James who, during the Presbyterian coup, carried to the Lords on 31 July and 1 August orders which gave powers to the London militia to raise horse, invested the Presbyterian-run ‘committee of safety’ with authority to request the issue of ordnance and to commission officers, and empowered Trinity House to recruit a naval force for use against the Independents.43CJ v. 262a, 263a, 263b. Either he or his brother John was doubtless the teller with Stapilton on 2 August for the majority who voted that the king should be invited to London to negotiate peace.44CJ v. 264b. Both were added the next day to the committee of safety.45CJ v. 266a. After the army’s march on London had reversed the coup, on 13 August one of them was a teller with Oldisworth for the majority who still opposed a declaration from the Lords condemning Presbyterian use of the London militia.46CJ v. 273b.

As the reaction against the coup intensified, the brothers left Westminster. They were both recorded as absent at a call of the House on 9 October.47CJ v. 330b. But as the political tide ebbed and flowed over the next few months, one or both returned. It may have been John who was nominated on 14 December to a committee determining punishment for soap monopolist Sir Henry Compton, it being he whose rights to profits of the office of custos brevium had been strengthened by a previous ruling against Compton; if not it was probably James.48CJ iii. 385a; v. 383a. The latter was ordered on 23 December to go with Lord Herbert and others to hasten the collection of Wiltshire assessments.49CJ v. 400b. On the other hand, excused from acting in person on his parallel appointment for Monmouthshire, Henry Herbert was more likely to have been the MP included on committees for redress of grievances (4 Jan. 1648), for reforming hospitals (6 Jan.) and for repairing buildings damaged by war (10 Jan.).50CJ v. 400b, 402b, 417a, 421a, 425a.

On 21 April 1648, amid renewed disorder, James was a teller with Sir Walter Erle* for the large minority who sought to soften an order for sequestration of delinquents.51CJ v. 539b. Ordered on 30 May with Ludlowe and Salisbury MP John Dove* to go to Wiltshire to ‘settle the peace of that county’ as insurgency gathered momentum, two days later he was added to the county committee with three other MPs who were likewise more evidently committed against the insurgents than himself.52CJ v. 579a, 580b. Over the summer he presumably hoped, like his father and elder brother, for the successful conclusion of peace negotiations with the king, but his degree of engagement with the proceedings of the House is obscure.53CJ v. 622a No Herbert surfaced in the Journal between early July and early November.

For different reasons, any of the Herberts might have been the MP included on 4 November on the deputation to confer with the common council and committee of militia over the militia-men threatening Parliament.54CJ vi. 69b. But it seems somewhat more likely that it was James (or perhaps John) who on 10 November was a teller for the majorities who blocked the banishment of Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham, a Presbyterian who had advocated imposing very easy terms on the king, but who meted out that punishment to Major-general Laugharne, who had aligned with the rebels in south Wales in May.55CJ vi. 73a. Both James and Henry were in the Commons in late November, when they were respectively instructed to bring in assessments in Wiltshire and Brecon.56CJ vi. 83b, 88a. However, it was surely the former who on 4 December successfully opposed those marshalled by Ludlowe and Nicholas Love* who wished to force a vote that the king’s answers to Parliament’s peace proposals had been finally unsatisfactory.57CJ vi. 93b. This was the step which precipitated Pride’s Purge two days later and the seclusion of James and John, but not Henry, from the Commons.58W. Prynne, A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members [1648].

While both his father and his elder brother soon returned to Parliament, for the next decade James kept away. Although he was to take the oath for the Wiltshire commission of the peace in January 1649, he was did not appear at quarter sessions.59C231/6, p. 131; Wilts. RO, A1/1/2. For several years he was probably preoccupied with continuing lawsuits over the Spiller inheritance.60HMC Lords iii. 127; CCC 1146-7; C5/386/144; C5/405/75; C6/129/84; C6/131/86. His and his wife’s right to the manor of Haddenham, on the border of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, appears to have been established relatively early in the process, but the couple seem to have spent much of their time either in Westminster or at Petersham, south of the Thames near Richmond.61Mems. of St Margaret, Westminster, 221, 255; St Peter, Petersham, Surr. par. reg. A handsome provision under his father’s will – albeit also charged with the earl’s debts – no doubt reconciled him to a quiet life.62PROB11/211/579. Unlike his siblings, he was not even implicated by disinformation in royalist plots.

Like his brother John, James re-entered the House for the third protectorate Parliament, sitting for Queenborough on the strength of the local interest he had inherited. He was named to the elections and privileges committee (28 Jan.).63CJ vii. 595a. A week later he was probably the ‘Mr Herbert’ who admitted to having been presented by deranged dissident William King with a copy of his Twenty-five Queries. Some MPs found King’s work treasonous, but Bennet Hoskins* reassured Herbert that mere possession of the book was ‘not an offence’.64Burton’s Diary, iii. 80. Evidently again part of the Presbyterian caucus in the House, on 15 February James Herbert was a teller with Arthur Annesley* for the majority who refused to record a grateful endorsement of the ‘loyal address’ to Protector Richard Cromwell presented from London by Samuel Moyer and others.65CJ vii. 604a. A fortnight later he successfully took on republicans Hesilrige and Henry Neville* to ensure the debating of a motion to transact with the Other House (1 Mar.).66CJ vii. 609a. However, having presented a private petition on his brother John’s behalf (5 Mar.), on 19 March he was given leave to go into the country.67CJ vii. 610b. Conceivably, he did not return before the dissolution.

Following the return of the Rump, on 7 May Herbert and his brother John were at Westminster ‘standing in the lobby’ when William Prynne*, Annesley, Wiltshire MP Henry Hungerford* and others arrived to assert the right of all who had been elected to the Long Parliament to take their seats, and ‘resolved to go in with them’.68W. Prynne, Loyalty Banished (1659), 3 (E.986.20). Perhaps this was not such a chance encounter as Prynne made it appear – especially if one of them were the Mr Herbert who had received a visit from Prynne a few years earlier.69Harington’s Diary, 82. Thwarted in their object, the former MPs were obliged to leave, and James once more disappeared from the record.

Included on Prynne’s list of those ‘refusing to sit, till their restitution’, Herbert (whose brother John had died in the interim) returned to the House with others in the same category in February 1660.70W. Prynne, A Full Declaration of the true state of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 30 (E.1013.22). On 23 February he was nominated to the committee to bring in an act for settling county militias.71CJ vii. 849a. On 13 March he was a teller for the majority who rejected the attempt by die-hard commonwealth MPs to disable delinquents from voting in elections to the anticipated new Parliament.72CJ vii. 874a. He was still sitting at the dissolution three days later.73The Grand Memorandum (1660, 669.f.24.37).

Re-elected for Queenborough, Herbert sat in the Convention and represented the constituency in two Parliaments after the Restoration. He also returned to local office, including in Monmouthshire, despite the fact that his main residence was now at Tythrop.74SP29/264, f. 74; E115/219/137; E115/221/112; HP Commons 1660–1690. However, in 1660 he rendered much-appreciated assistance to Edmund Ludlowe (whose ties to the Herberts had been strengthened by his marriage to Oldisworth’s stepdaughter) when the regicide tried unsuccessfully to render himself to Speaker Harbottle Grimston* and take advantage of offers of indemnity.75Ludlow, Voyce, 164. Alone of his family, Herbert also re-established cordial relations with his father’s second wife, Anne Clifford, dowager countess of Pembroke.76T. Lever, The Herberts of Wilton (1967), 100. He died on 3 April 1677, leaving £5,000 to his unmarried daughter Jane, land in Wales to his second surviving son William, leases in London to his youngest son Dormer, and newly-purchased lands in Buckinghamshire and elsewhere to his son Philip (his third of that name). The overseers of his will were Arthur Onslow* and his late father’s executor Sidney Bere.77PROB11/354/5; Herbert’s heir, also James, was rapidly elected to replace him as MP for Queenborough, despite being ‘beyond the sea’.78SP44/43, f. 72; ‘James Herbert (1660–1704)’, HP Commons 1660–1690.