Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke
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Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, 1st Earl of Montgomery KG (October 16, 1584 – January 23, 1649). Born at Wilton House, he was the son of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke and his second wife, Mary Sidney, sister of Sir Philip Sidney the poet. Philip Herbert and his older brother William were the 'incomparable pair of brethren' to whom the First Folio of Shakespeare's collected works was dedicated in 1623.
Philip Herbert was a sometime favourite of King James I of England, and was a good-looking man with an interest in hunting and field sports. He was Member of Parliament for Glamorgan from 1604 until 1605, when the king created him Earl of Montgomery and Baron Herbert of Shurland. He married first, at James I's enthusiastic urging, Susan de Vere, daughter of the 17th earl of Oxford. They had three children:
- Anna Sophia Herbert, married Robert Dormer, 1st Earl of Carnarvon and had issue.
- Sir Charles Herbert (c. 1619–1635), married Mary Villiers, daughter of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham and had no issue.
- Philip Herbert, 5th Earl of Pembroke (c. 1621–1669)
Philip Herbert married secondly Anne Clifford, de jure Baroness de Clifford, daughter of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, and widow of Sackville, earl of Dorset, on 1 June 1630.
Also in 1630, he succeeded to the earldom of Pembroke when his older brother William, the 3rd earl, died without legitimate children. Philip's quarrelsome disposition often led him into trouble, as it did with Thomas Wentworth, viscount and later first earl of Strafford and Herbert's own second wife Lady Anne Clifford, but he continued in royal favour with King Charles I, who made him Lord Chamberlain in 1626 when his brother William was promoted from that office to be lord steward, and frequently visited him at Wilton. Charles depended on Montgomery to exercise his considerable local parliamentary patronage on behalf of the crown in the parliaments of the 1620s, as well as in the Short Parliament of April 1640. He worked to bring about peace between the king and the Scots in 1639 and 1640, although he was suspected of double-dealing, and when the quarrel between Charles and the English parliament turned to civil war, he deserted the king and lost his office of chamberlain.
Trusted by the popular party, Pembroke was made governor of the Isle of Wight, and he was one of the representatives of the parliament on several occasions, notably during the negotiations at Uxbridge in 1645 and at Newport in 1648, and when the Scots surrendered Charles in 1647. From 1641 to 1643, and again from 1647 to 1650, he was Chancellor of the University of Oxford, as his brother the 3rd earl had been prior to his death in 1630. In 1648 he removed some of the heads of University houses from their positions because they would not swear to uphold the solemn league and covenant, and his foul language led to the remark that he was more fitted " by his eloquence in swearing to preside over Bedlam than a learned academy." In 1649, although a peer, he was elected and took his seat in the House of Commons as member for Berkshire. He was a collector of paintings, an important patron of Van Dyke, and had an interest in architecture. The family's country estate of Wilton House in Wiltshire was redesigned prior to the civil war by the royal architect Inigo Jones in the palladian style (embodied in the Double Cube Room) which Jones introduced to England.
[edit] References
- Doyle, James William Edmund (1886). The Official Baronage of England: showing the succession, dignities, and offices of every peer from 1066 to 1885, Vol. III. Longmans, Green & Co.. Retrieved on January 25, 2007.
| Honorary Titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by The Duke of Lennox |
Lord Lieutenant of Kent 1620–1646 |
Succeeded by Interregnum |
| Custos Rotulorum of Kent 1624–1642 |
Succeeded by The Earl of Leicester |
|
| Preceded by The Duke of Buckingham |
Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire 1628–1641 |
Succeeded by The Baron Paget (Parliamentarian) The Earl of Carnarvon (Royalist) |
| Preceded by The Earl of Pembroke |
Lord Lieutenant of Somerset 1630–1639 |
Succeeded by The Marquess of Hertford |
| Custos Rotulorum of Cornwall 1630–1642 |
Succeeded by The Earl of Radnor and The Earl of Bath |
|
| Custos Rotulorum of Pembrokeshire 1630–1643 |
Succeeded by The Earl of Carbery |
|
| Custos Rotulorum of Monmouthshire 1630–1645 |
Succeeded by Sir Nicholas Kemeys, Bt |
|
| Custos Rotulorum of Glamorgan 1630–1645 |
Succeeded by Sir John Aubrey, Bt |
|
| Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall and Wiltshire 1630–1646 |
Succeeded by Interregnum |
|
| Preceded by The Lord Powis |
Custos Rotulorum of Montgomeryshire 1641–1643 |
Succeeded by Herbert Vaughan |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by The Earl of Pembroke |
Lord Chamberlain 1625–1641 |
Succeeded by The Earl of Essex |
| Lord Warden of the Stannaries 1630–1642 |
Succeeded by Interregnum |
|
| Peerage of England | ||
| Preceded by New Creation |
Earl of Montgomery 1605–1649 |
Succeeded by Philip Herbert |
| Preceded by William Herbert |
Earl of Pembroke 1630–1649 |
|
