HERBERT, Sir Henry (1594-1673), of Ribbesford, nr. Bewdley, Worcs.

Sir Henry Herbert was one of a junior branch of a dynasty that sprang from a follower of William I, but which had settled in south-east Wales and over many generations gradually assumed a Welsh identity. The Herbert earls of Pembroke, settled at Wilton, Wiltshire, and the Somerset marquesses of Worcester, settled at Raglan and bearing the courtesy title Lords Herbert, were senior branches.28Autobiography, 167-71. It was Sir Henry’s great-grandfather, Sir Richard Herbert, who moved a branch of the family from Monmouthshire to Montgomery Castle, where Henry was born, the sixth son of Richard Herbert and his wife, Magdalen, the daughter of Sir Richard Newport† and Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Bromley†. His siblings included a distinguished elder brother, Sir Edward Herbert† (from 1629 Baron Herbert of Chirbury), and the celebrated poet, George Herbert† (d. 1633). From his brother’s autobiography we learn that Henry received a good scholarly education, presumably not in Montgomeryshire, and went to France to polish his accomplishments.29Autobiography, 12. He was there in 1618, when he was advised by his poet brother, George, to bring back to England the best in French culture, and the following year he accompanied his elder brother Sir Edward, ambassador to France, and worked as a manager of their diplomatic tour.30CSP Dom. 1619-23, 25; Mont. Collns. vii. 151-2; xx. 137-8, 255. In April 1623 he acted as an intermediary between the king and Sir Edward, when the former wanted news of the journey by the prince of Wales to Spain.31PRO30/53/5/31.

In 1623 at Wilton, the home of his kinsman, the 3rd earl of Pembroke (William Herbert), lord chamberlain, he was knighted by James I, as confirmation of his standing at court.32Mont. Collns. vii. 152. His closeness to the lord chamberlain doubtless assisted him at around the same time to the place of master of the revels. Technically, Sir John Astley was master, until his death in 1641 - he had himself succeeded to the office by a reversion in May 1622 - but by letters of deputation of 24 July 1623, Herbert received the profits of the office, acted as master, and was therefore called thus.33AO1/2047/26; Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, 1623-1673 ed. J.Q. Adams (1917), 8. He began work licensing plays and other entertainments immediately, and continued to do so when Philip Herbert*, 1st earl of Montgomery and later 4th earl of Pembroke, succeeded his brother as chamberlain. The surviving extracts from Herbert’s order book, which is itself lost, suggest that most of his work was directed towards pruning texts of passages that might have been construed as blasphemous, ribald or ‘profane’, rather than towards overt political censorship.34Dramatic Records, 18 ff. Nevertheless, the office of master of the revels was not infrequently at the centre of controversy over plays which might be interpreted as offering allegorical comment on policies and people of the government or the court. In 1632 the characters of Shirley’s The Ball, for example, were thought to resemble specific courtiers exactly enough for Herbert to insist on changes, and in 1635 he committed to prison a man who lent the players at Salisbury Court a church robe with ‘Jesus’ emblazoned on it.35Dramatic Records, 19, 64. The trend was not all one way, however. In 1638 a play by Massinger, The King and the Subject, was altered on the king’s insistence because lines of the eponymous king, Don Pedro of Spain, suggested that monarchs might tax as they pleased, and in 1634 Herbert lost an argument before the king with Endymion Porter*, who endorsed the dramatic validity of mild oaths inserted in a play by William Davenant, Porter’s friend. Even here, however, Charles insisted on all discussions going through Herbert’s office, and always took a keen interest in Herbert’s work.36Dramatic Records, 22-3.

Herbert extended the scope of his office to include the licensing of every play presented for printing, as well as for performance, and there can be little doubt that the post was lucrative, as well as politically sensitive.37Dramatic Records, 39-40. In a typical year before 1640, Herbert might receive £65-75 a year as an allowance for attending plays, an allowance for accommodation in London of £50 a year, and a generous budget for staging plays for the court, before collecting fees of 40s for a new play and 20s for a revived drama.38AO1/2047/26; Add. 19256, f. 48. By the end of the 1620s Herbert was well enough established to begin looking around for a country estate, and on the advice of Sir Ralph Clare† and with the assistance of his brothers, in 1628 he settled on Ribbesford, near Bewdley.39Epistolary Curiosities i, 15; VCH Worcs. iv. 308.

His election for the seat of Montgomery boroughs in the 1626 Parliament was on the Herbert family interest, but he made little mark on the assembly, participating only in one committee, the conference between Lords and Commons on defence.40CJ i. 832a; Procs. 1626, ii. 216. Direct evidence about Herbert’s political views in this period is lacking. Given that he took a generally censorious view of court activities, and that at a slightly later time, in the 1630s, he provided congenial accommodation at court for the young Richard Baxter, it is probably the case that he was not in sympathy with Archbishop William Laud or with the political outlook associated with him.41C115/N3/8548; Reliquiae Baxterianae i. 11; Cal. Baxter Corresp. ii. 127. From 1638 to 1639 Herbert bestowed gifts of plate for communion services on the church at Ribbesford, in the words of the minister there, ‘to the glory of God, the ornament of the church and the exemplary encouragement of others’.42Ribbesford par. reg. p. 90. By October 1638 he claimed he was owed £1,065 in fees and expenses arising from his work, but on the eve of the civil war he prevailed with Sir Ralph Clare to make available the funds for a lectureship at Kidderminster.43Dramatic Records, 74. This provided Baxter with a golden opportunity to build up the kind of systematic preaching ministry for which the puritans had long argued and is further evidence that the powerful axis at court of Laud and the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) had made little or no inroad into Herbert’s beliefs.44Cal. Baxter Corresp. ii. 127.

In the spring of 1639 Herbert was in attendance on the king on his journey to meet the army he hoped to assemble at York, and any tensions between him and other courtiers were set aside as he set off north in some style. His own account of the journey records his progress, from London to his home at Ribbesford, thence to York via Wolverhampton, Derby and Rotherham. He took with him gold and silver arms and armour, some of it a present from Viscount Scudamore [I.] (Sir John Scudamore†), for whom Herbert had provided a news service in the 1630s, and whose circle of correspondents included both puritans and Laudians like himself.45NLW, MS 5299E ff. 3-4; C115/N3; K. Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992), 361. There was no battle in the first bishops’ war in which his military resolve would be tested, but he stayed in the north until 22 June as part of the king’s retinue at Berwick.46CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 283, 349; Warner, Epistolary Curiosities, i. 20.

Herbert was back at Ribbesford in September 1639, and early in 1640 was elected to sit for Bewdley in the Short Parliament, on his own interest. He was elected to the committee of privileges on 16 April.47CJ ii. 4a. Around this time he quarrelled with Sir Ralph Clare, his former adviser in the purchase of Ribbesford: at issue between them was ownership of the tithes there, but the dispute soon spilled over into political conflict when they both stood in Bewdley for the Long Parliament.48Add. 37157 ff. 50-54; NLW, MS 5299E ff. 5-6. Herbert was elected on a narrow franchise of the magistrates only, while the burgesses lent their support to Clare. In the event the election was decided in Herbert’s favour.49Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend ed. Porter, Roberts, Roy, 48. In the first two months of this assembly, Herbert was named to five committees, including the important committee of privileges (6 Dec. 1640). The most politically sensitive was that to examine the conduct of lords and deputy lieutenants and the levying of coat and conduct money (14 Dec.). Another was to consider the grievances of colleges (17 Dec.). He sat on the committee to consider conciliar jurisdiction in the north and in the marches of Wales (23 Dec.) because of his status as a marcher MP and member of the council.50CJ ii. 21a, 50b, 53a, 57a, 60b.

In January 1641, Herbert acquired from the Laudian Bishop Roger Mainwaring of St David’s, who had formerly been dean of Worcester, the advowson of Kerry, Montgomeryshire, suggesting again that his ‘puritan’ outlook was broad.51NLW, Powis Castle correspondence, i. 10097; Powis Castle deeds and docs. ii. 12854. The same month he fell foul of Serjeant John Wylde*, in a dispute that sprang from a disagreement in the committee investigating the election for Worcestershire, which led to Herbert’s assaulting Wylde.52Procs. LP ii. 125. At the root of the quarrel was what Herbert took to be Wylde’s support for the sheriff’s conduct of the election, in which Sir Thomas Lyttelton* was unsuccessful.53Procs. LP ii. 626-7, 646, 680-1, 684-5, 725. The House on several occasions determined times when both Wylde and Herbert would put their case so that their differences could be composed, and postponement of the hearing cost Herbert his chairmanship of the privileges committee, sitting on the case of Sir Lewis Dyve†, who was thought to have manipulated the Bedfordshire by-election of December 1640.54CJ ii. 64a, 94a, 97a. On 27 February 1641, on one of these occasions when the dispute was aired, another member, probably Sir John Northcote, reported that Herbert had also struck Edmund Prideaux I* and William Constantine*.55Procs. LP ii. 575. On 9 March, the case was debated, and further hearings mooted, but as late as March 1642 the matter was still unresolved.56CJ ii. 100b, 102ab, 268a, 467b.

The simmering quarrel with Wylde did not damage Herbert’s standing as a working Member: he continued to be named to investigations into the jurisdiction of the council in the marches (29 June 1641), and through the spring of 1642 played a leading role in the inquiry into Sir William Waller’s* election at Andover (7 Apr. 1642), chairing the privileges committee.57CJ ii. 191b, 516a, 517a, 530a, 553a, 554ab; PJ ii. 267. In his recorded interventions in the chamber, Herbert seems, despite his apparent propensity to fisticuffs, to have taken an irenic role; in January 1642 supporting his cousin, Attorney-general Edward Herbert*, against attacks, and in March 1642 arguing for a limited punishment for Sir Ralph Hopton* for saying that Parliament considered that the king was about to convert to Catholicism.58PJ i. 82, 503.

His position was, in local terms, unaligned, not least because he was now no friend either of Clare or of Wylde. His status as a courtier and officeholder ensured that he was named to the king’s commission of array for Worcestershire in June 1642, but his local influence was limited. On 14 August he joined other members of the embryonic Worcestershire royalist party in combining to provide horses in the king’s defence. Their declaration of practical support for the king engineered a confrontation between themselves and John Wylde and Humphrey Salwey*.59Northants. RO, FH133 unfol.; Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 92, 96. On 20 August Wylde read out a warrant in the House, and alleged that Sir John Pakington, Herbert and Sir Thomas Lyttelton intended to kidnap Salwey and him. It is unlikely that Herbert had much more of a role in the affair than that of a recent opponent of Wylde, but this alone was enough to be fatal to his standing as a Member and on the same day he was disabled, along with Pakington and Samuel Sandys, from sitting any further in the House.60CJ ii, 729a; PJ iii. 310-11.

When armed conflict broke out, Herbert played no part in the Worcestershire royalist war effort, in which another of his enemies, Sir Ralph Clare, was so prominent. His brother, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, and others wrote to him in 1643 and 1644 when he was at Ribbesford and Oxford, and it seems most likely that he moved between these places offering the royalist command what advice he could, in preference to taking an active military role.61Epistolary Curiosities, i. 30, 31, Add. 37157, f. 56. Indeed, in the early years of the war, far from supporting Clare, Herbert found time to pursue his quarrel with him over the Ribbesford tithes, in which the royalist commissioners for the county intervened after an unsatisfactory outcome to a trial at Worcester assizes. John Boraston, the clergyman at Ribbesford, alleged that Herbert had by force seized his corn, while Herbert’s servant swore that Boraston had unduly influenced the jury against Herbert at the assizes. Herbert complained to the king about the commissioners in 1644, and maintained that Clare was behind the whole episode, which exposed the Worcestershire royalists’ characteristically quarrelsome culture.62Add. 37157, ff. 50-4v. Herbert was unquestionably of royalist sympathies, but sought to limit the duration and extent of the war. He was at the Oxford Parliament in January 1644, and signed the letter calling on the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux), to persuade the Westminster Parliament to a peace.63Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. Although in the following year he was named as a commissioner to raise contributions for the king’s cause in Worcestershire, there is no evidence that he acted.

Throughout 1645, Baron Astley (Jacob Astley) and Prince Maurice had to write to the bailiff and burgesses of Bewdley to prevent them from sequestering Herbert’s estates there.64Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 194; Epistolary Curiosities i. 34-5. He approached Parliament to atone for his association with the royalists in January 1646, seven months before the surrender of Worcester. He had friends to plead on his behalf in these circumstances, notably Sir William Brereton*, and this must have taken the sting from the Commons’ warrant for his arrest the following month.65CCC 1072; CJ ii. 431b. In September, his fine was set at one third at £1,330, and in October he was discharged from custody, his fine having been paid. The county committee of Worcestershire was ordered in September 1648 not to molest him, but this order may have been prompted by the actions of the Montgomeryshire county committee, which had listed Herbert in January of that year among those whose estates – presumably in Herbert’s case the Kerry tithes, which he continued to collect – were to be confiscated.66CCC 1072, CJ v. 516b; vi. 44b; NLW, Powis Castle 1990 Deposit, box marked ‘correspondence 16th-18th centuries’, Montgomeryshire sequestration cttee. pprs.; Mont. Collns. xxvi. 264.

His attitude towards the trial and execution of the king can only be assumed to have been one of disapproval. Throughout the late 1640s and 1650s glimpses of him may be seen through scattered correspondence, in which he is shown as engaging in family matters, including a dispute with his daughter Vere over her jointure, and using the courts to protect his property rights: living an active life outside the public arena.67Add. 37157, f. 62; Add. 19256, f. 45; Mont. Collns. xi. 350. He disposed of some literary papers of his late brother, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, and maintained his own intellectual interests in drama, verse and prose.68Epistolary Curiosities i. 40-1; Autobiography, 160n.; NLW, MSS 5302B, 5301E ff. 1-2. He seems to have stayed outside the plotting of the Worcestershire royalists, but this should not be taken as approval of the commonwealth and protectorate. Among his papers are extensive untitled manuscript transcripts of Edward Sexby’s Killing No Murder, an analysis of whether or not Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell* was a tyrant. It drew upon Aristotle, Plato, Tacitus and the Old Testament to answer the question whether an assassination would be lawful.69NLW, MS 5301E f. 24; cf. ‘Killing No Murder’, repr. in O. Lutaud, Des Révolutions d’Angleterre à la Révolution Française (The Hague, 1973), 372-403.

In 1660 Herbert could not, as a former royalist, stand for Parliament, but was back in the commission of the peace by July of that year, and in 1661 was returned for Bewdley in another contest with his old enemy, Clare. His success must have given him great satisfaction. Resuming the pattern of extensive committee membership that had been cut short by his expulsion in 1642, he became a busy MP, given to ‘much attendance at the Parliament House’. He was active in helping his fellow-Worcestershire MPs achieve their ambitions, serving on committees to enable Sir John Pakington* to cancel the conveyance of his estate, and Samuel Sandys* to sell part of his. While he was not a vociferous cavalier, it was the case that the government could usually rely on him to vote for supply.70Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 318; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir Henry Herbert’. Much of his time after 1660 was taken up with his reasserting the rights of the office of master of the revels. At first he began issuing orders to leaders of corporations like the mayor of Maidstone, on matters relating to public entertainments, but the cultural climate after 1660 was such that his censorious and puritan outlook was quite out of favour at the court of Charles II.71CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 303, 452; Epistolary Curiosities i. 59, 61; Add. 19256 ff. 46, 48, 50, 64, 65, 66, 67, 72. He found that leading playwrights like Sir William Davenant could challenge him successfully in the courts, and that he was locked in a war of attrition with a court which no longer wished to accord his office the status he thought it deserved.72Add. 19256 ff. 74, 78-9, 83, 86, 87; CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 244, 1663-4, 148, 200. The grant in 1668 of the reversion of Herbert’s office to the son of the courtier playwright Tom Killigrew must have been final confirmation that the mastership of the revels was of no further moral value.73CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 257. In his will of January 1673 he left the bulk of his estate to his son, Henry, and stipulated that a charitable bequest should be made to the church at Ribbesford, not to the chapel-of-ease at Bewdley.74PROB11/342, f. 51. Herbert died on 27 April 1673 and was buried at Covent Garden on 6 May.75Herbert Corresp. 213; St Paul’s, Covent Garden (Harl. Soc. Reg. xxxvi), 62. None of his direct descendants sat in Parliament.