Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke

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Lt.-Gen. Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke and 6th Earl of Montgomery PC FRS (29 January 1693[1] – 9 January 1750) was the heir and eldest son of Thomas Herbert (c. 1656–1733) and his first wife Margaret. He was styled Lord Herbert from birth until he inherited his father's earldoms of Pembroke and Montgomery in 1733.

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[edit] Life

Studying at Christ Church, Oxford up to 1705 in a milieu of classicist architecture (its dean, Henry Aldrich, was then at work on his Elementa architecturae and on overseeing construction of the Peckwater quadrangle, Palladian before Palladianism was popular in England) he went on a grand tour in 1712 (meeting Lord Shaftesbury in Naples, William Kent in Rome, and also going to Venice).

He was appointed lord of the bedchamber to George II during his time as the prince of Wales. He was made a deputy lieutenant of Worcestershire on 29 January 1715, and was commissioned captain & lieutenant-colonel in the Coldstream Guards on 12 August 1717. On 20 September 1721, he was promoted to the rank of colonel, and made captain & colonel of the 1st Troop of Horse Guards.[1]

Upon the accession of George II in 1727, Herbert remained his close associate, and was made first lord of the bedchamber. After acceding to the earldom on 9 January 1733, Pembroke left the Horse Guards and was appointed colonel of The King's Own Regiment of Horse (22 June 1733). Later that year (24 August), he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire. George II continued to favor Pembroke, who was appointed groom of the stole on 8 January 1735 and sworn a Privy Councillor the next day.[1] However, he proved unsuccessful in his attempts to mediate between George and his son prince Frederick. Though he exercised powerful patronage in Wilton, his local constituency, Pembroke played only a slight role in national politics.

The Palladian bridge
The Palladian bridge

He shared his father's antiquarian tastes (commissioning Andrew Fountaine to supervise the cataloguing of his father's collections), but expressed them through architecture rather than collecting. Opinions of his talents in that area were mixed — Horace Walpole stated that "no man had a purer taste in building"[2] but Sarah, duchess of Marlborough wrote that the Earl's talent was little more than to "imitate ill whatever was useless" in Inigo Jones and Palladio's buildings[3] As one of the "architect earls", he collaborated with Roger Morris to design Marble Hill House (1724–29), the White Lodge, Richmond (1727–28)[4], and the Palladian Bridge over the little River Nadder at Wilton House (1736/7). His design for Marble Hill House was inspired by Colen Campbell's design for Pembroke House, which the 9th Earl had commissioned in 1723 and which Morris had completed the following year.

William Townsend's designs for the Column of Victory, Duke of Marlborough or Blenheim Column at Blenheim Palace (1732/33) were also inspected by the Earl, and he also designed Westcombe House, Blackheath, Kent (1727–8) and the water tower on his father's estate at Houghton (c.1730) as well as parts of the design of Castle Hill, Devon (1729) and Wimbledon House, Surrey (1730–33). He also redecorated a few of the rooms in the south front of Wilton House. Though he was uninvolved in its design, he also acted as an energetic promoter of the project to build Westminster Bridge, getting the relevant Act of Parliament through in 1738, laying the first stone in January 1739 (and the last stone of the main structure in 1747), attending 120 meetings of the bridge commissioners (the last on the morning of his death), and consistently supporting its designer Charles Labelye and his caisson design against long and fierce opposition (after the subsidence of one pier in 1747, The Downfall of Westminster Bridge, or, My Lord in the Suds mocked him for this support, but he was ultimately vindicated).

He enjoyed swimming, played tennis every day and generally remained continually active and healthy and (as seen in Roubiliac's portrait bust of him at Wilton) was strong and powerfully built and strong, but he seems to have developed asthma (Walpole mentions this in his detailed account of the Earl's death) and spent some weeks at Bath in winter 1743, during which he experienced breathing difficulties. Pembroke was promoted lieutenant-general on 18 February 1742, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society on 15 December 1743. During the king's trip to Hanover in 1748, he served as one of the Lords Justices. He died at Pembroke House in 1750.

[edit] Marriage and issue

He and Mary FitzWilliam (eldest daughter of Richard FitzWilliam, 5th Viscount FitzWilliam) married on 28 August 1733, and they only had one child, Henry, who inherited his father's earldoms.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Doyle, James William Edmund (1885). The Official Baronage of England vol. III. London: Longmans, Green, 34. Retrieved on 2008-06-05. 
  2. ^ Works, 3.486
  3. ^ Letters of a grandmother: being the correspondence of Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, with her granddaughter Diana, duchess of Bedford, ed. G. Scott Thomson (1943), page 54
  4. ^ Nikolaus Pevsner says of the White Lodge's neo-Palladianism that it "shows the style at its worst in a mechanical imitation of one of Palladio-Burlington's ideas" (Pevsner, Surrey (The Buildings of England) 191971:55.

[edit] External links

Military offices
Preceded by
The Duke of Montagu		 Captain and Colonel of the
1st Troop of Horse Guards
1721–1733		 Succeeded by
The Lord Catherlough
Preceded by
The Viscount Cobham		 Colonel of The King's Own Regiment of Horse
1733–1743		 Succeeded by
Sir Philip Honywood
Court offices
Preceded by
The Earl of Godolphin		 Groom of the Stole
1735–1750		 Succeeded by
The Earl of Albemarle
Honorary titles
Preceded by
The Earl of Yarmouth		 Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire
1733–1750		 Succeeded by
Robert Sawyer Herbert
Peerage of England
Preceded by
Thomas Herbert		 Earl of Pembroke
1733–1750		 Succeeded by
Henry Herbert