Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/198

Herbert permission from the council to visit York (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1657-8, p. 553).

At the Restoration Herbert resumed his office of master of the revels. On 30 July 1660 he licensed at the Duke of York's request a trial of skill with eight weapons between two performers at the Red Bull playhouse. He received 200l. for his expenses in October 1660. But his endeavours to exercise all his former powers were thwarted at every step. The mayor of Maidstone (9 Oct. 1660) disputed his claim to license plays in a provincial town (, i. 59-60). On 11 July 1663, when a similar case was in dispute with the corporation of Norwich, the king distinctly withdrew puppet and other shows from Herbert's control. In June 1661 he sought to suppress an unlicensed exhibition of ‘strange creatures’ in London (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1661-2). But Herbert was involved in more serious quarrels with the chief London managers and actors. In August 1660 Charles II granted licenses to Thomas Killigrew and Sir William D'Avenant to erect two new playhouses, and to form two new companies, with authority to license their own plays. Herbert petitioned against the grant, and his case was referred to the attorney-general, Sir Geoffrey Palmer (, Anc. Doc. pp. 21 -3). D'Avenant openly defied Herbert, and Herbert brought two suits-at-law against him to recover fees due to his office. He gained one action and lost the other, and the contradictory verdicts led D'Avenant to appeal once again to the king, with the result that Lord Clarendon and the Earl of Manchester, lord chamberlain, were ordered in July 1662 to arbitrate between the litigants. Herbert drew up an elaborate statement of the privileges which he had exercised earlier (,ii. 266-8), but the arbitrators apparently decided against him. Meanwhile he endeavoured to close the Cockpit playhouse in Drury Lane, which John Rhodes had opened without a license from him (, p. 26), and when Michael Mohun, Charles Hart, and other members of the king and queen's company, persisted in ignoring his rights, brought an action against them, in which he was successful (December 1661) (ib. p. 44;, iii. 262). On 31 July 1661 Charles II issued an order generally confirming his privileges. On 4 June 1662 Herbert came to terms with Thomas Killigrew, who promised to pay him a royalty on all plays produced, to support his authority, to dissociate himself from D'Avenant, and to pay all the sums which Herbert had claimed from Mohun and their friends. In the same year Herbert brought an action against Betterton for 100l., the amount of royalties due on the production of ten new plays and one hundred ‘revived’ plays, between 15 Nov. 1660 and 16 May 1661. By these actions and by loss of fees Herbert asserted that he was deprived of 5,000l. On 21 July 1663 he put forward a claim to license all plays, poems, and ballads for the press, and suggested that all entertainments at which music was performed, even extending to village wakes, should be liable to his fees (, i. 185). But to avoid further strife he leased out his office in 1663 to two deputies, E. Hayward and J. Poyntz, who were to pay him an annual salary. They soon complained that they lost heavily by the arrangement, and begged him to renew his endeavours to assert the ancient rights of the office.

Herbert sat in parliament as member for Bewdley, Worcestershire, from 8 May 1661. On 8 Feb. 1664-5 Evelyn dined with him (Diary, ii. 177). In 1665 he prepared for the press his brother Edward's poems, which he dedicated to his grandnephew, Edward, third lord of Cherbury. He died in April 1673, and was buried at St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden. His fortune by that date was much reduced. His brother Edward, who did not live to witness the troubles of Herbert's later years, wrongly says that he ‘attained to great fortunes for himself and his posterity to enjoy.’ A portrait by Dobson, painted in 1639, is at Powis Castle.

The name of Herbert's first wife is not known. By her he had a son William (b. 1 May 1626), who died young, and two daughters, Vere (b. 29 Aug. 1627), who married Sir Henry Every, bart., of Egginton Hall, Derbyshire, and Frances (b. 29 Dec. 1628),who died young. By his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Robert Offley of Dalby, Leicestershire, whom he married about 1650, Herbert had a son Henry, created Lord Herbert of Cherbury [q. v.], and two daughters, Magdalene (b. 12 July 1655), who married George Morley of Droxford, Hampshire, son of George Morley, bishop of Winchester; and Elizabeth, who married Charles Hore of Cagford, Devonshire, in 1694, and died 30 July 1695. Herbert's second wife died 7 July 1698.

Herbert's papers passed with his house at Ribbesford to Francis Ingram, esq., of Bewdley about 1786. Ingram's son restored most of them to the Earl of Powis. While they were in the possession of the Ingram family, several of Herbert's letters, his ‘praiers and meditations in old age,’ and a diary which he kept at Berwick in 1639, were printed by Mrs. Rebecca Warner in her ‘Epistolary Curiosities,’ 1818. Herbert's papers included an original manuscript of Edward, lord Herbert of Cherbury's, autobiography, and Herbert's office-book while he was master of the