Philip Herbert, 7th Earl of Pembroke

Early life

Baptised on 5 January 1652/53 and brought up in Wiltshire at Wilton House, Pembroke was the son of Philip Herbert, 5th Earl of Pembroke, being the eldest son of his father's second marriage to Katherine Villiers, a daughter of Sir William Villiers and his wife Rebecca Roper. His paternal grandmother was the 4th Earl's first wife, Susan de Vere; his step-grandmother was Anne Clifford, daughter of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, and widow of Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset. He was created a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of King Charles II.

As he grew up, Herbert was soon seen as a throwback to his mentally unstable grandfather Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke: both were prone to violent and unprovoked assaults, although the grandson was by far the more violent character.

Life and career

On 8 July 1674, at the age of twenty-two, Herbert succeeded his elder half-brother William as Earl of Pembroke and Earl of Montgomery, and on 17 December the same year he married Henrietta de Kéroualle, the sister of Charles II's mistress Louise de Kéroualle. By this marriage, Herbert had his only child, a daughter named Charlotte, who married firstly John Jeffreys, 2nd Baron Jeffreys, (son of the notorious hanging judge), and secondly, Thomas Windsor, 1st Viscount Windsor. She died in 1733, leaving issue by both marriages. Her mother had died in 1728, having made a second marriage to the Marquis de Thois.

Pembroke served as Custos Rotulorum ("Keeper of the Rolls") of Pembrokeshire and of Glamorgan from 1674, and as Custos Rotulorum and Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire from 20 May 1675 until his death.

Criminal record

From childhood on, especially when drunk, he was subject to fits of homicidal mania: he may have inherited the condition from his grandfather, the 4th Earl, who was notorious for his sudden and unprovoked attacks on fellow peers. He was guilty of several assaults which might well have ended in death, and in1677 he nearly killed a man in a duel.

On 28 January 1678, Charles II, not a man easily shocked, committed him to the Tower of London "for uttering such horrid and blasphemous words, and other actions proved upon oath, as are not fit to be repeated in any Christian assembly". One of the actions referred to was "abuse of the Sacrament of the celebration of the Lord's Supper". Pembroke submitted a petition to the House of Lords for their assistance, denying everything alleged and praying that his fellow peers "will not believe the accusation, or your petitioner capable of so horrid a crime". The Lords then petitioned for Pembroke's release, although with seven bishops and the Duke of York dissenting, and the king released Pembroke on 30 January.

Less than a week later, on 5 February, a man called Philip Rycault complained to the House of Lords that Pembroke had assaulted him in the Strand, and the House ordered Pembroke to give a recognizance of £2000 that he would thereafter keep the peace. However, by then Pembroke had already killed a man, Nathaniel Cony, whom he knocked down and kicked to death in a tavern for no apparent reason, and a few days later a Middlesex grand jury indicted him for murder. He was subsequently tried by his peers on 4 April 1678 and found not guilty of murder (by eighteen votes to six), but guilty of manslaughter. Privilege of peerage was granted, and he was discharged on payment of all fees. However, the Lord High Steward, the Duke of Ormonde, warned Pembroke that "his lordship would do well to take notice that no man could have the benefit of that statute but once". Pembroke however was incorrigible, and shortly afterwards made a savage assault on Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset, with whom he was engaged in a lawsuit.

Suspect in the Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey

On 17 October 1678 Sir Edmund Godfrey, who had been foreman of the grand jury which indicted Pembroke for the murder of Nathaniel Cony, was found dead in a ditch on Primrose Hill, impaled with his own sword, and this unexplained death caused an anti-Roman Catholic uproar, generally known as the Popish Plot. John Dickson Carr, in a book about Godfrey's death, examines the contemporary evidence and concludes that Pembroke murdered Godfrey in a revenge killing. This theory was later considered and supported by the historian Hugh Ross Williamson. Another historian, John Philipps Kenyon, while raising some difficulties with the theory, agreed that of all the suspects Pembroke had by far the strongest motive for killing Godfrey.

His last murder, final years, death

In 1680, John Aubrey noted that Pembroke had at Wilton "52 mastives and 30 grey-hounds, some beares, and a lyon, and a matter of 60 fellowes more bestial then they".

On 18 August 1680 Pembroke killed William Smeeth, an officer of the watch, following a drunken evening at Turnham Green. On 21 June 1681, the grand jury of Middlesex again indicted him for murder. As Ormonde had warned him, he could not claim privilege of peerage a second time, and he briefly fled the country. Remarkably, though, following a petition to the king signed by twenty-four of his fellow peers, he was granted a royal pardon.

Pembroke died on 29 August 1683 and was succeeded by his brother Thomas. He was buried in Salisbury Cathedral.