HERBERT, HENRY (1617 - 1656) Parliamentary soldier and statesman

was the eldest son of William Herbert of Coldbrook, Monmouth, and sixth in descent from William Herbert (died 1469), 1st earl of Pembroke. His father, his great-grandfather, and his great-great-uncle Sir William Herbert (died 1593) had all represented Monmouthshire in Parliament and on 31 March 1642, after education at the Middle Temple (entered 24 June 1634) and at Magdalen Hall, Oxford (matriculated 10 October 1634), he was elected to the vacancy in the county seat in the Long Parliament caused by the death of Sir Charles Williams of Llangibby. Most of his family were Royalists, but his marriage to Mary, daughter of John Rudyard, grocer, of London (cousin to the opposition leader Sir Benjamin Rudyard), and perhaps an itch for the Raglan lands that had belonged to his ancestors, made him a Roundhead. He tried in vain to neutralize the Romanist Raglan influences in his county, retained his seat at Westminster till the Long Parliament was dissolved, took the Covenant (22 September 1643).

He served as colonel in the Parliamentary army in South Wales, capturing Cardiff and Swansea (September 1645), was on the Parliamentary committee for the county in 1646, and was also appointed (August 1645) a commissioner with the Scottish army. In 1646 his father was made captain of horse in the Roundhead army, and he himself was given £3,000 out of the profits of the earl of Worcester's woods as compensation for his expenses in the service of Parliament. During the Interregnum he served on the High Court of Justice (25 June 1651), on the fourth Council of State (19 November 1651) and several of its committees, as commissioner of taxes (1647-52) and of militia (1654) for Monmouthshire and as its member in the first Protectorate Parliament (12 July 1654).

Author

• Emeritus Professor Arthur Herbert Dodd, (1891 - 1975)

Sources

• A History of Monmouthshire, i, 186, ii, 22
• Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: the members of the University of Oxford
• H. A. C. Sturgess, Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple (1949), i, 99
• John Roland Phillips, Memoirs of the Civil War in Wales and the Marches, 1642–1649 (London 1874), i, 319, 324, ii, 268-319
• Rushworth, Historical Collections of Private Passages of State (1721), v, 480
• Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1637-8, 603
• The Journals of the House of Lords, viii, 293
• Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (London 1911), i, 970, ii, 39, 472, 669, 1074
• Calendar of the Committee for Advance of Money, 1642–56 (1888), ii, 1022
• W. R. Williams, The parliamentary history of the principality of Wales, from the earliest times to the present day, 1541-1895 (Brecknock 1895), 123
• The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1946-7, 82, 94, 96
• A. H. Dodd, Studies in Stuart Wales (Cardiff 1952). 112, 124-5, 157

Further Reading

• Wikipedia Article: Henry Herbert

Additional Links

• VIAF: 62990610
• Wikidata: Q5722887

Published date: 1959

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/