Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/216

Herbert parliament in staying the horrors of a civil war. In January 1643 he was one of the commissioners sent by parliament to the king at Oxford with propositions for peace, and on 2 Nov. was appointed by parliament a commissioner for the plantations. In January 1644-5 he was present at the Uxbridge conferences. At Uxbridge he talked freely with Hyde, one of the king's commissioners, and, while urging Hyde to induce the king to yield to the parliamentary demands, characterised his own colleagues as ‘a pack of knaves and villains.’ Hyde asserts that Pembroke's adherence to the parliament and his regular attendance at Westminster through 1644 and 1645 were now mainly inspired by a fear of losing Wilton, and that his influence with his party was steadily declining. In April 1644 he accompanied a parliamentary deputation to the city of London, and addressed the common council on the resolve of parliament to bring the war to a speedy issue (cf. speech ib. xiii. 161). In July the parliament nominated him lord-lieutenant of Somerset, and in 1645 a commissioner of the admiralty. In December 1645, when peace propositions were again under discussion, it was proposed that Pembroke should be made a duke. On 7 July 1646 he was reappointed a commissioner to treat for peace, and in January 1646-7 was one of the parliamentary delegates who received the king's person from the Scots and conducted him to Holmby. A charge that he had given money to the king was investigated by the House of Lords on his return, and was dismissed. On 27 July 1648 he was appointed by parliamentary ordinance constable of Windsor Castle and keeper of the Great Park, and in the autumn of 1648 represented the parliament at the renewed negotiations opened with the king at Newport.

On 25 June 1641 Laud, then a prisoner in the Tower, had resigned the chancellorship of Oxford University, and Pembroke had succeeded him. An eulogistic broadside in verse, adorned with a portrait, was published by William Cartwright in honour of Pembroke's accession to the office. But on 7 Sept. 1642, when the vice-chancellor, Dr. Pinke, entreated Pembroke to protect the city and university from the attack of the parliamentary army, he brusquely replied that their safety would be assured if all cavaliers were dismissed and delinquents yielded up to the parliament (, Orig. Lett. 2nd ser. iii. 300-1;, Hist. Coll. v. 11-13). When Oxford became the king's headquarters, Pembroke was superseded in the chancellorship by the Marquis of Hertford, but on 3 Aug. 1647 parliament issued an ordinance for his restoration, which was quickly followed by an ordinance for the visitation and reformation of the university. The visitors, headed by Sir Nathaniel Brent, began operations at Oxford in September, and a committee of lords and commons, sitting in London under Pembroke's presidency, directed them to act vigorously and to administer the solemn league and covenant to all university officials. The heads of houses proved contumacious in their dealings with the visitors, and Pembroke's committee summoned them before them in London in November. Pembroke reproached the offenders in characteristically foul language, but some delay elapsed before he proceeded to extremities. On 18 Feb. 1647-8 he nominated Dr. Reynolds, a member of his own party, vice-chancellor, together with new proctors and many new heads of houses. On 11 April 1648 he arrived at Oxford in person, and forcibly ejected those heads of houses and prebendaries of Christ Church who had declined to obey the visitors. On the same day he presided in convocation, when Reynolds was installed as vice-chancellor and degrees conferred. Thenceforth the visitors met with little opposition. Pembroke himself intervened to protect Philip Henry [q. v.] at Christ Church from ejectment. Clarendon assigns Pembroke's conduct at Oxford to ‘the extreme weakness of his understanding and the miserable compliance of his nature.’ Wood describes him as better fitted by ‘his eloquence in swearing to preside over Bedlam than a learned academy.’ ‘He would make an excellent chancellor for the mews were Oxford turned into a kennel of hounds,’ writes the author of ‘Mercurius Menippeus,' variously identified with Butler and Birkenhead. Similar sentiments find expression in numerous satires issued at the time of Pembroke's visit; of these the best known are ‘An Owleat Athens,’ 1648 (verse), ‘Pegasus, or the Flying Horse from Oxford,’ and ‘Newes from Pembroke to Montgomery, or Oxford Manchestered,’ with Pembroke's speech ‘word for word and oath for oath.’

Pembroke's reputation with the parliament was now very high. On 14 Feb. 1648-9 he was appointed a member of the first council of state, and on 16 April 1649 was returned to the House of Commons as member for Berkshire. The House of Commons approved the electors' choice, and received him with great respect. This ‘ascent downwards’ excited the ridicule of numberless royalist wits, who published mock speeches, attributed to ‘the late Earl of Pembroke,’ in which his habitual violence of language is amusingly satirised. The pamphleteers represent that