styled 1650-69 Ld. Herbert of Cardiff; suc. fa. 11 Dec. 1669 as 6th earl of PEMBROKE and 3rd earl of Montgomery
Never sat.
MP Glam. 1661-11 Dec. 1669
bap. 14 July 1642, 1st. s. of Philip Herbert, styled Lord Herbert (later 5th earl of Pembroke) and 1st w. Penelope (1620-c.1647), da. of Sir Robert Naunton of Letherington, Suff.; half-bro. of Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke and 4th earl of Montgomery and Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke and 5th earl of Montgomery. educ. privately (Mr. Christopher Wace); travelled abroad (France, tutors: Sir John Denham‡, Sir Richard Fanshawe‡) 1658-9.1 unm. d. 8 July 1674; will 3 June 1674, pr. 3 May 1676.2
Dep. lt., Wilts. c.1660-?d., Glam. Jan. 1674-d.; freeman, Poole 1660; custos rot., Wilts. 1665-d., Glam. and Pemb. 1670-d.3
Associated with: Wilton House, Wilts.
William Herbert was the only son from the short-lived marriage of the future 5th earl of Pembroke and his first wife Penelope Bayning, the widow of Paul Bayning†, 2nd Viscount Bayning. He travelled abroad in France in 1658-9, led by such recipients of his father’s literary patronage as Sir John Denham and Sir Richard Fanshawe. He was returned for Glamorgan at the elections for the Cavalier Parliament, but it is difficult to know his activities in the Commons because of the presence there at the same time of another Lord Herbert, Henry Somerset, styled Lord Herbert of Raglan (later duke of Beaufort).
After his father’s death on 11 Dec. 1669, the newly elevated 6th earl of Pembroke never once attended the House before his death in July 1674. He was, however, reasonably diligent in ensuring that his vote was cast by proxy, first registering it on 13 Mar. 1670 with his kinsman Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, who had married Pembroke’s step-sister Lady Anne Bayning. On 1 Feb. 1671 a petition of some of the late earl’s creditors asking that his goods, then in the possession of the present earl, might be sold to satisfy his debts was dismissed by the House for being contrary to the privilege of Parliament.4 Two weeks later, on 17 Feb. 1671, Pembroke’s own petition against ‘divers husbandmen’ who had occupied and made waste of part of his estate in the parish of Aldbourne, Wiltshire, was presented to the House but dismissed without even meriting an entry in the Journal.5
For the following short session of spring 1673, Pembroke’s proxy in favour of the west country peer Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, a long colleague and proxy recipient of Pembroke’s father, was registered on 3 Feb. 1673, one day before the session formally opened, and cost Pembroke £4 10s. in fees. He once again registered it with Shaftesbury on 27 Dec. 1673, well in advance of the opening of the session of Jan.-Feb. 1674.6
Pembroke was unmarried, although earlier he had been linked to the heiress Elizabeth Malet, when he died at an early age in July 1674.7 He was succeeded by his half-brother Philip who, even as a teenager, was acquiring the reputation for drunkenness, violence and profligacy which was to make his future life infamous. To ensure the safety of the family estates from this reprobate, William, at least according to a later account of his other half-brother Thomas, intended to make Philip only a tenant for life of the estates, and established two trustees to manage the estate in Philip’s name. At least he thought that is what he had done, but according to a later petition of the 8th earl, the 6th earl, by an unfortunate slip of the pen, worded his will incorrectly so as to leave the spendthrift and disreputable 7th earl in full control of part of the estate.8
C.G.D.L.- 1 CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 449, 580; Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe (1907), 122-3.
- 2 TNA, PROB 11/352.
- 3 CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 439; 1673-5, p. 116; J. Hutchins, Hist. and Antiquities of Dorset, i. 32.
- 4 HMC 8th Rep. pt. 1, p. 161; PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/345/362.
- 5 HMC 8th Rep., pt. 1, p. 162-3; PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/346/370.
- 6 TNA, PRO 30/24/5/245.
- 7 Pepys Diary, vii. 385.
- 8 TNA, PROB 11/351; 11/352, f. 47; HMC Lords, n.s. i. 287.