HERBERT, HENRY (1617-1656) Parliamentary soldier and statesman,
was the eldest son of William Herbert of Coldbrook, Mon., and sixth in descent from William Herbert (d. 1469), 1st earl of Pembroke (q.v.). His father, his great-grandfather, and his great-great-uncle Sir William Herbert (d. 1593) (q.v.) had all represented Monmouthshire in Parliament and on 31 March 1642, after education at the Middle Temple (entered 24 June 1634) and at Magdalen Hall, Oxford (matriculated 10 Oct. 1634), he was elected to the vacancy in the county seat in the Long Parliament caused by the death of Sir Charles Williams of Llangibby. Most of his family were Royalists, but his marriage to Mary, daughter of John Rudyard, grocer, of London (cousin to the opposition leader Sir Benjamin Rudyard), and perhaps an itch for the Raglan lands that had belonged to his ancestors, made him a Roundhead. He tried in vain to neutralize the Romanist Raglan influences in his county, retained his seat at Westminster till the Long Parliament was dissolved, took the Covenant (22 Sept. 1643), served as colonel in the Parliamentary army in South Wales, capturing Cardiff and Swansea (Sept. 1645), was on the Parliamentary committee for the county in 1646, and was also appointed (Aug. 1645) a commissioner with the Scottish army. In 1646 his father was made captain of horse in the Roundhead army, and he himself was given £3,000 out of the profits of the earl of Worcester's woods as compensation for his expenses in the service of Parliament. During the Interregnum he served on the High Court of Justice (25 June 1651), on the fourth Council of State (19 Nov. 1651) and several of its committees, as commissioner of taxes (1647-52) and of militia (1654) for Monmouthshire and as its member in the first Protectorate Parliament (12 July 1654).
Bibliography:
- Monmouthshire, i, 186, ii, 22;
- Foster, Alumni Oxon.;
- Sturgess, Adm. to Middle Temple, i, 99;
- J. R. Phillips, Civil War, i, 319, 324, ii, 268-319;
- Rushworth, Hist. Coll., v, 480;
- Cal. S.P. Dom., 1637-8, 603;
- L.J., viii, 293;
- Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, i, 970, ii, 39, 472, 669, 1074;
- Cal. Ctte. for Adv. of Money, ii, 1022;
- W. R. Williams, Parl. Hist., 123;
- Trans. Cymm., 1946-7, 82, 94, 96;
- A. H. Dodd, Studies in Stuart Wales. 112, 124-5, 157.
Author:
Emeritus Professor Arthur Herbert Dodd, M.A., (1891-1975), Bangor
