Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/214

  ], by whom he had two sons and two daughters.

 HERBERT, PHILIP, and fourth  (1584–1650), born 10 Oct. 1584, was younger son of, second earl of Pembroke [q. v.], by his third wife, [q. v.] He seems to have been named Philip after his mother's brother, Sir Philip Sidney. With his elder brother [q. v.], he matriculated at New College, Oxford, on 9 March 1592-3, when nine years old (Oxf. Univ. Reg., Oxf. Hist. Soc., ii. 195). He only stayed at the university three or four months. In April 1597 ‘little Mr. Philip Harbert’ was reported to be a suitor for the hand of Mary Herbert, heiress of Sir William Herbert of St. Julians, who ultimately married another kinsman, [q. v.] (Sydney Papers, ii. 43). On his first visit to court in April 1600 his forwardness caused general amazement (ib. p. 190). In the following year his father offered the queen 5,000l. if she would allow a royal ward, daughter of Sir Arthur Gorges, to marry him, but the offer was declined. After ‘long love and many changes,’ he was, in October 1604, ‘privately contracted to my Lady Susan [Vere, third daughter of Edward, seventeenth earl of Oxford], without the knowledge of any of his or her friends’ (, Illustrations, iii. 238). On 27 Dec. the marriage took place at Whitehall with elaborate ceremony, in which the king took a prominent part (, Mem. ii. 43). James gave the bride land worth 500l., and the bridegroom land to the value of 1,000l. a year.

Philip is said to have been a handsome young man, and in the early years of James's reign was acknowledged to be the chief of the royal favourites. ‘The comeliness of his person’ and his passion for hunting and field-sports, writes Clarendon, rendered him ‘the first who drew the king's eyes towards him with affection.’ ‘He pretended to no other qualifications than to understand dogs and horses very well.’ In May 1603 he became a gentleman of the privy chamber, on 23 July was appointed a knight of the Bath, and from 1605 to the end of the reign was a gentleman of the bedchamber. He was member for Glamorganshire in the parliament of 1604, and on 4 May 1605 was created Baron Herbert of Shurland in the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, and Earl of Montgomery. On 9 Feb. 1606-7 James I bestowed on his favourite the castle of Montgomery, which he took from its rightful owner, Edward Herbert, lord Herbert of Cherbury, but in July 1613 the new earl restored it to his kinsman on payment of 500l. From 1608 onwards he received lavish grants of land from James. Montgomery accompanied the king to Oxford in August 1605, and was created M.A. In 1606 it was rumoured that he was deep in debt, and that the king was compounding with his creditors (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603-10, pp. 334, 348). In court-tournaments and in masques he was always a prominent figure (cf. ib. 1611-18, pp. 428, 512). The distinction which he gained when accompanying the king in the hunting-field or in the pursuit of other outdoor sports gave new currency to the old lines:

(, iii. 291). But Montgomery was very choleric and foul-mouthed. In 1607, according to Osborne's scandalous memoirs, a Scottish courtier, John Ramsay, afterwards Viscount Haddington and Earl of Holderness, switched ‘him on the face’ at Croydon races, and ‘Herbert not offering to strike again, there was nothing spilt but the reputation of a gentleman.’ In 1610 he had a quarrel with the Earl of Southampton at a game of tennis, but the king compounded the quarrel (, iii. 154). In 1617 he accompanied James I to Scotland, and had a violent dispute on the journey with Lord Howard de Walden (ib.; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1611-1618, p. 443). The king's favour, however, was never alienated by his surly temper. He was made a knight of the Garter on 23 April 1608, and high steward of Oxford University 10 June 1615. In the latter year he also received a share in the glass monopoly; on 4 Dec. 1617 became keeper of Westminster Palace, Spring Gardens, and St. James's Park; on 17 March 1623-4 lord-lieutenant of Kent, and in December 1624 a privy councillor. In his last illness James I recommended Montgomery to the favourable notice of his successor, Charles, and in the first month of the new reign he was despatched to Paris as one of the embassy to conduct the Princess Henrietta Maria to England. This was the only occasion on which he left England. Montgomery bore the spurs at Charles's coronation, 2 Feb. 1625-6, 