PHILIP HERBERT,

EARL OF PEMBROKE, AND FIRST EARL OF MONTGOMERY.

THIS very singular and eccentric person, for we will not call him

nobleman, as he thought fit to divest himself of that dignity, as well as to all claim to it in its more general sense, was the second of the two sons of Henry, fourth Earl of Pembroke of his surname, by his third Lady, Mary, the amiable and accomplished daughter of Sir Henry, and sister of Sir Philip, Sidney.

Of the sort of education bestowed on a son of parents in every way so exalted there can be no doubt, but we have no particulars of it, save that it was concluded at New College in Oxford: all else that is certain is that he derived no profit from it, for Anthony Wood tells us that "he was so illiterate that he could scarcely write his name." His high rank, and probably a restlessness of temper for which he was ever remarkable, brought him to Elizabeth's court at a time of life uncommonly early. That agreeable newsmonger Rowland White, in a letter to Sir Robert Sidney, of the nineteenth of April, 1597, calls him "little Mr. Philip Harbert ;" and in another, of the twenty-sixth of the same month, in the year 1600, written from the court, says " Mr. Philip Harbert is here, and one of the forwardest courtiers that ever I saw in my time, for he had not been here two houres but he grew as bold as the best." His chief anxiety at this time seems to have been, naturally enough, to get a wife, and in each of those letters different ladies are mentioned to whom he was then a suitor; one of them the heir of his kinsman, Sir William Herbert of Monmouthshire, the other of Sir Arthur Gorges, but both those enterprizes failed.

Presently however after the accession of James this inclination

was fully gratified, and by a very splendid alliance. He married on the twenty-seventh of December, 1604, Susan, daughter of Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, and their nuptials were celebrated with an expense and magnificence almost unparalleled in the annals of courtly extravagance. Sir Thomas Edmunds, recounting several particulars of them, on the following day, in a letter to Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, one of whose daughters was married to Philip's elder brother, William Earl of Pembroke, says "the charge of the gloves and garters given were esteemed to amownt to well near a thousand powndes; his graunte is passed unto him for his twelve hundred pound land, and it is expected that 'erre it be long, the King will also bestowe some dignitie on him." Sir Dudley Carleton too, in a letter, nearly of the same date, detailing at large an abundance of circumstances which attended the marriage, some of which it would be improper as well as unnecessary, to repeat here, tells him that "the presents of plate, and other things given by the noblemen, were valued at two thousand five hundred pounds; but that which made it a good marriage was a gift of the King's of five hundred pounds" (p ann.) "land, for the bride's joynture:" and Rowland White again, on the fourth of February, writes to Lord Shrewsbury"Mr. Sandford and myself have dispatched the greate gifte his Mate bestowed upon hym, and we doe yeld him a very good account of our labour for he hath two brave seates in Kent and Wiltshire." Indeed all the private correspondence of the nobility at that precise period abounds with such recitals.

Such circumstances in the story of a mere youth, a younger brother, of no fame nor attainments, might seem singular, but the fact was that he possessed singular beauty of countenance and person, in the knowledge and practice of all the little fopperies and artifices that could contribute to the adornment of which he excelled. It has been again and again repeated that such qualifications were irresistibly attractive of James's regard, and on these precious pretensions Philip Herbert, whom he presently knighted,