Thomas Herbert

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Sir Thomas Herbert (1606 - 1682), traveller and historian, belonged to an old Yorkshire family, studied at Oxford and Cambridge, and went in connection with an embassy to Persia, of which, and of other Oriental countries, he published a description. On the outbreak of the Civil War he was a Parliamentarian, but was afterwards taken into the household of the King, to whom he became much attached, was latterly his only attendant, and was with him on the scaffold. At the Restoration he was made a Baronet (Herbert of Tintern, Monmouth), and in 1678 published Threnodia Carolina, an account of the last two years of the King's life.

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Sir Thomas Herbert (1606 - 1682), was born to a Yorkshire family, and studied at Oxford and Cambridge. He was gentleman of the bedchamber to King Charles I from 1647 up to the king's execution. In his earlier years he went in connection with an embassy to Persia, and he later published an account of his travels. During the first civil war he was a keen supporter of Parliament, and when he was in the king's service the New Model Army found no reason to suspect him of disloyalty. There is varied opinion on the matter of Herbert's devotion to King Charles. In 1678 he published Threnodia Carolina, an account of the last two years of the king's life. In this account Herbert seems devoted in the extreme, being too distraught to be with the king on the scaffold and bursting into tears when the king seemed upset by some news he had brought. It is true that many of the stauch Roundheads Parliament appointed to the king's service were converted into royalists on getting to know him. However Threnodia Carolina may have been an attempt to give Herbert a good name in Charles II's government (the king made him a baronet) and to clear the name of his son-in-law Phayre, who was a regicide.

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