HERBERT
,
EDWARD
(
1583
-
1648
),
1st baron Herbert of Cherbury
;
b.
3 March 1583
, at
Eyton-on-Severn
, son of
Richard
(d.
1596
; see under
Herbert
of
Montgomery
) and
Magdalen
Herbert
, of
Montgomery
. He entered
University College
,
Oxford
, in
May 1596
, m.
Mary
Herbert
in
1599
, living at first in
London
but returning in
1605
to
Montgomery
where he was appointed
magistrate
and
sheriff
. In
1608
he made the first of many journeys to
Europe
which he describes so vividly in his
Life
, one of the earliest autobiographies in the
English
language. In
1619
he was appointed
English ambassador
at
Paris
and lived there in great state until his dismissal in
1624
. Created
lord Herbert of Cherbury
in
1629
, he seems to have been disappointed by the rewards which followed his services to the
Crown
. In the
Civil War
he remained neutral and refused repeated invitations to join the
Royalist
cause. His castle falling to the
Parliamentarians
,
Herbert
moved to
London
and d. there
20 Aug. 1648
.
A handsome, vain, sensitive man, a bold and profound thinker,
Edward
Herbert
was a strange mixture of philosopher and buffoon. His is a rich personality moulded by an age of
transition from the activity of the Elizabethan age to the rationalism of the late Stuart period. His
De Veritate
,
1624
, bridges the gulf between
Renaissance
thought and that of the modern age, and his writings on religion point the way to deism and to the liberal theology of a later period. [His
Life
informs us that he could speak
Welsh
.]
Bibliography:
-
The life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury.
Written by himself
, London, 1886
(ed.
Lee
) (Gregynog Press,
1928
);
-
The Poems, English & Latin, of Edward,
Lord Herbert of Cherbury
, Oxford 1923
(ed.
Smith
),
1923
;
-
De Veritate
, 1624; Translated with an
introduction by , Bristol,
1937
,
1624
(trs. and ed.
M. H. Carre
),
1937
;
-
De Causis errorum una cum tractatu de
Religione Laici, et appendice ad Sacerdotes nec non
quibusdam poematibus. (De vita humana disquisitio
,
1645
,
1645
;
-
Lord Herbert of Cherbury's De religione
laici
, 1944
,
1645
(trs. and ed. by
H. R. Hutcheson
),
1944
;
-
De Religione Gentilium, errorumque apud eos
causis
, 1663
,
1663
;
-
Religio Laici
(ed.
Wright
);
-
Modern Language Review
, 1905 ff
,
28, 1933
;
-
R. I. Aaron
, in
Modern Language Review
, 1905 ff
,
36, 1941
, and
Mind
,
54, 1945
(dealing with Herbert MSS.)
-
On Herbert's philosophy cf. introduction to
M. H. Carre
and
H. R. Hutcheson
(above) and
Sorley
, in
Mind
, iii,
1894
.
Author:
Professor Richard Ithamar Aaron, D.Phil. F.B.A., (1901-87),
Aberystwyth
