HERBERT, William V (by 1532-76), of Cogan Pill, Glam.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1532, 2nd s. of (Sir) George Herbert of Swansea by 1st w. Elizabeth, da. of Sir Thomas Berkeley of The Vyne, Hants. m. Alice, da. of Sir John Raglan of Carnllwyd, Glam., wid. of William Mathew of Castell y Mynach, Glam., at least 1s.2

Offices Held

Sheriff, Glam. ?1551-2, 1566-7; commr. goods of churches and fraternities 1553; j.p. 1555-d.; ?escheator 1562-3; v.-adm. S. Wales.3

Biography

William Herbert settled at Cogan Pill near Penarth, where he built a house on the manor acquired by his father in 1544. He was probably the William Herbert who was sheriff of Glamorgan in 1551-2 and four years later he was brought on to the bench.4

Herbert’s recruiting for the campaign of 1557 led by his uncle William Herbert I, 1st Earl of Pembroke, was to prove troublesome for him. On his return from France, where he had commanded 100 men, he was sued in the Star Chamber by Sir Thomas Stradling, who complained that he had misused a commission from Pembroke to muster the earl’s tenants and friends by setting a ‘tax or tallage’ of £1,000 or more on the local inhabitants ‘for his own private lucre and gain of his own authority and [to] extort power by colour of furniture of harness for 100 footmen appointed to the said service’. He had had warrants sent to the constables of all townships and anyone refusing to contribute was threatened with distraint, with the result that he raised an unprecedented amount, part of it in ‘bribes that he received for licensing men to tarry at home’. Five of Stradling’s servants who had been distrained had sued Herbert at the great sessions but could find no attorney to represent them ‘lest my said lord [Pembroke] should be offended’. Stradling began his process as soon as Herbert returned from the war, and although Herbert must have been in London for the first session of the Parliament of 1558 he evidently ignored more than one summons to appear. In August the sheriff of Glamorgan, William Basset, who had returned Herbert to Parliament, was ordered to arrest him and before the end of the month he was in the Fleet. How long he remained there is not known, nor whether he was released in time for the second session of the Parliament which began on 5 Nov., but the case against him presumably lapsed on the Queen’s death and was in any case covered by the general pardon which he sued out in 1559.5

Herbert was returned again as knight of the shire to the Parliament of 1572 but died early in 1576, before the second session, and was replaced by his brother-in-law William Mathew.

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: P. S. Edwards

Notes

  • 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from first certain reference. Vis. Hants (Harl. Soc. lxiv), 56-57; Arch. Camb. (ser. 3), xii. 5; G. T. Clark, Limbus Patrum Morganiae, 286, 288.
  • 3. CPR, 1553, p. 419; 1560-3, p. 445; 1563-6, p. 29; SP11/5/6; Cardiff Recs. ed. Matthews, i. 351.
  • 4. G. M. Williams, High Sheriffs of Glam. 17, 54.
  • 5. St.Ch.4/4/29; Cardiff Recs. iv. 74 seq.; SP11/13/52, 61; CPR, 1558-60, p. 178.