Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/179

Herbert  were placed in the catacombs of St. Mary's catholic cemetery, Kensal Green.

[Academy, 1882, ii. 38; Art Journal, 1882, p. 256; Royal Academy Exhibition Catalogues, 870-5; information from Wilfrid V. Herbert, esq.]  HERBERT, EDWARD, first (1583–1648), was eldest son of Richard Herbert, esq., of Montgomery Castle. His great-great-grandfather was Sir Richard Herbert of Colebrooke, Devonshire, the brother of William Herbert, earl of Pembroke (d. 1469) [q. v.] His great-grandfather, Sir Richard Herbert, was active in repressing disturbances about Montgomery Castle in the reign of Henry VIII (, Henri VIII, sub anno 1520). His grandfather, Sir Edward Herbert, took part under his kinsman, William Herbert, earl of Pembroke (1501?-1570) [q. v.], in the storming of St. Quentin in 1557; repressed lawlessness in Wales with a strong hand as deputy-constable of Aberystwith Castle (16 March 1543-4) and as sheriff of Montgomeryshire (1557 and 1568); was M.P. for his county in 1553 and 1556-7; was esquire of the body to Queen Elizabeth, and was buried in Montgomery Church 20 May 1593. Edward's father, a handsome and brave man, well versed, according to his son, in history and the Latin tongue, was sheriff of Montgomeryshire in 1576 and 1584, and is probably the Richard Herbert who sat as M.P. for Montgomeryshire in the parliament of 1585-6. He died in 1596, and was buried in the Lymore chancel of Montgomery Church on 15 Oct. of that year. An alabaster canopied tomb (still extant) was erected to his memory by his widow in 1600, with recumbent figures of himself (in complete armour) and of herself, and small images of their children (see engraving in, Poems, ed. Grosart, vol. ii., frontispiece). Herbert's mother was Magdalen, daughter of Sir Richard Newport (d. 1570) and Margaret, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Bromley (d. 1555?) [q. v.] She was a woman of great personal charm and fervent piety, and deeply interested herself in the education of her seven sons and three daughters. While at Oxford with her eldest son Edward she made the acquaintance of the poet Donne, with whom she maintained for the remainder of her life ‘an amity made up of a chain of suitable inclinations and virtues’ (, Life of George Herbert). She was liberal in her gifts to Donne's family; he addressed much of his sacred poetry to her, and commemorated her noble character in sonnets, and in a touching poem called ‘The Autumnal Beauty.’ In 1608 she married, at the age of forty, a second husband, Sir John Danvers [q. v.], who was nearly twenty years her junior. The union was, according to Donne, thoroughly happy, and Sir John treated all his step-children with the utmost kindness (cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. pt. iv. 379). She died in June 1627, and was buried in the parish church of Chelsea, near her second husband's London residence. A sermon on her life and character was preached by Donne on 1 July following, and was published, together with commemorative verses by her fourth son, George Herbert [q. v.] the poet. Her manuscript household book, with the expenses of her house in London between April and September 1601, belonged to Heber (Cat. pt. xi. p. 829). Of Herbert's six brothers, George, Henry, and Thomas are separately noticed. His second and third brothers, Richard and William, were both soldiers. The former, a distinguished duellist, fought much in the Low Countries, and was buried at Bergen-op-Zoom, apparently in 1622. The latter fought both in Denmark and the Low Countries, and died young. Charles, Herbert's fifth brother, born in 1592, was admitted to Winchester College in 1603 ; became a scholar of New College, Oxford, 4 June 1611, and fellow 3 June 1613, and died in 1617. Verses by him appear in Dr. Zouch's ‘Dove,’ but the lines signed ‘C. H.’ in Sir Thomas Herbert's ‘Travels’ (1634) are often assigned to him without authority. Of Herbert's three sisters, Elizabeth married Sir Henry Jones of Abermarlais, Carmarthenshire; Margaret, John Vaughan of Llwydiarth, with whose family the Herberts had been long previously at strife; and Frances was wife of Sir John Brown of Lincolnshire.

Herbert was born at Eyton-on-Severn, near Wroxeter, in the house of his maternal grandmother, Lady Newport, on 3 March 1582-3. An engraving of the remains of his birthplace as they were in 1816 appears in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1816, i. 201. Very little of it now survives. He was, according to his own account, a thoughtful and inquisitive child, and owing to hereditary epileptic symptoms was not taught his alphabet till he was seven. At the age of nine he left his grandmother's house to study under Edward Thelwall at Plas-y-Ward, Denbighshire, and two years later was sent to ‘one Mr. Newton,’ at Diddlebury, Shropshire, perhaps Thomas Newton, a well-known classical scholar. He thus acquired a good knowledge of Greek, Latin, and logic, and in May 1596, at the age of fourteen, matriculated as a gentleman-commoner of University College, Oxford (Oxf. Univ. Reg.,