Sir Matthew CRADOCK of Swansea ( - )
1. Sir Matthew CRADOCK of Swansea has few details recorded about him.
Matthew CRADOCK had the following children:
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Second Generation
2. Margaret CRADOCK, daughter of Sir Matthew CRADOCK of Swansea, married Richard HERBERT.
Richard HERBERT of Ewyas, son of William Herbert, first earl of Pembroke (1) (c. 1423-1469), died in 1510. He and Margaret CRADOCK had the following children:
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Third Generation
3. William Herbert, first Earl of Pembroke (2), son of Richard HERBERT of Ewyas and Margaret CRADOCK, appeared in the census. He married Anne PARR.
William Herbert, first earl of Pembroke (1506/7-1570, soldier and magnate, was the second son of Richard Herbert (d.1510) of Ewyas, a gentleman usher to Henry VII, and his second wife, Margaret, daughter ot Sir Matthew Cradock of Swansea. His paternal grandfather was William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, who was executed in 1469 on the orders of the earl of Warwick for his loyalty to Edward IV.
Little can be said for certain of William Herbert's early life and upbringing. His father died in 1510, and his childhood was probably spent in the household of his mother's third husband, William Bawdrip, at Splott near Cardiff. At some point he entered the service of Charles Somerset, from 1514 earl of Worcester, who was related to the Herberts through his marriage to the daughter of William's half-uncle and namesake, William Herbert, earl of Huntingdon. John Aubrey, whose account of Herbert is a better guide to the latter's reputation than to the facts of his life, records that he was known as "Black Will Berbert", and states that he could neither read nor write. The charge of illiteracy is baseless, but there is record evidence to support Aubrey's claim that Herbert killed a man in Bristol, for he was named in a coroner's report of 1527, and there is nothing that contradicts his story that the killer then fled to France, where he joined the army and won the favour of Francois I, beyond the fact that in 1555 he was reported by the Venetian ambassador to have been recalled from negotiations at Calais "as he neither speaks nor understands any other language than the English" (Nightingale, 33). But Herbert hardly needed the French king's recommendation to draw him to the attention of Henry VIII, for in January 1526 he was already numbered among the latter's spears, or gentlemen pensioners. Probably it was Worcester who had secured his entree at court.
Herbert's activities in the years after 1526 are unclear, and he may have left court for a while. He was referred to as a member of the royal household in 1531, but as a late gentleman of the household in 1534. In 1535, however, he became an esquire of the body, and in 1539 he was named one of the fifty new gentlemen spears. A year later he appeared in a list of the gentlemen of the king's privy chamber with a salary of ?0. But Herbert's career took off after his sister-in-law Katherine Parr married Henry VIII on 12th July 1543. By 3 January 1544 he had been knighted, and other grants and honours followed. Early in 1544 the lands of Wilton Abbey were granted to Herbert and his wife, and later that year he led 100 light horse on the campaign which captured Boulogne. In 1545 he was returned to parliament as one of the knights of the shire for Wiltshire, and on 21 February 1546 he was made steward for life of the duchy of Lancaster estates in that county. In October that year he was promoted to share with Sir Anthony Denny the position of chief gentleman of the privy chamber, and was consequently in a position to gain substantially, in terms of both influence and wealth, from his closeness to the centre of power in Henry VIII's last days. He was in attendance on 30th December 1546 when the king had his last will and testament stamped, witnessed, and sealed, and was named both an executor and one of the council regency for Edward VI. He was also a beneficiary under the will, with a legacy of lands worth ?00, later raised to 400 marks; in fact the estates he received were worth far more, including, for instance, the house in Hackney once owned by the sixth earl of Northumberland, which Herbert was able to sell for ?000.
Herbert's first marriage was clearly crucial to his promotion at court. Anne Herbert (b.before 1514, d. 1552) was the younger daughter of Sir Thomas Parr (d.1517) of Kendal and his wife, Maud green (d. c.1531). The date of her marriage to Herbert is not recorded, but it may well have been to her that John Husee referred when he told Lady Lisle on 3 August 1537 that "it is thought Mrs. Parre will shortly marry (LP Henry VIII, 12/2. no. 424). Like her sister she was well educated, though her Latin seems to have become rusty later - when Roger Ascham entered Princess Elizabeth's household in 1548, he urged Anne to improve it, and lent her a copy of Cicero's De officiis for the purpose. When Katherine became queen, she made Anne her maid-in-waiting and the keeper of her jewels, and the two sisters remained close. According to Foxe, when the religious conservatives struck at the queen in 1546, "they thought it best, at first, to begin with some of those ladies whom they knew to be great with her, and of her blood; the chiefest whereof, as most of estimation and privy to all her doings, were these: the lady Herbert, afterward countess of Pembroke, and sister to the queen, and chief of her privy chamber" (Acts and Monuments, 5.557). Then, when Katherine saved herself by a timely submission to the king, she went to him "waited upon only by the lady Herbert her sister, and the lady Lane, who carried the candle before her" (ibid., 559). Like the queen, Anne Herbert patronized the Flemish miniaturist Levina Teerlinc, who became another member of Katherine's privy chamber.
Herbert continued to prosper during the protectorate of Edward Seymour, successively earl of Hertford and (form 16 February 1547) duke of Somerset. The two men became rivals for pre-eminence in Wiltshire, but at the beginning of Edward's reign, Herbert was a strong supporter of Seymour. In spiritual matters he does not appear to have shared the protector's evangelicalism, but throughout his life took an essentially Erastian position, whereby the English crown assumed responsibility for the direction of the nation's religious observance. Thus he reaped material benefits from the dissolution of the monasteries (he was granted the lease of Abergavenny Priory on 16 May 1537), and even carried out the work of dissolution himself in Wales. In 1538 he was employed by Thomas Cromwell to destroy the famous shrine of the Virgin at Pen-rhys, in the Rhondda valley. Such a stance made it easier for him to adapt to changed circumstances than for some of his contemporaries.
Herbert was returned to parliament for Wiltshire in 1547, and in May 1548 crossed to Boulogne to muster its garrision. He was clearly a skilful and enrgetic soldier and commander, as he showed in the following year. When rebellions broke out in several parts of England, Herbert first took vigorous action against insurgents in Wiltshire, where Edward VI recorded in his journal how "Sir William Herbert did put them down, overrun, and slay them" (Jordan, 12). By this time the men of Devon and Cornwall were also up, and around 10 July the council ordered Herbert to be ready to proceed thither. On the 24th he was instructed to march west with all his power, on the 28th to take two or three thousand men from Wales and two thousand from Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. He had not yet arrived when the royal army defeated the insurgents at Honiton and relieved Exeter, but on 18 August he was given command of the vanguard for the battle of Sampford Courtenay in which the western men were defeated again, and shortly afterwards destroyed a rebel force near Tiverton. The commander of the king's army, John, Baron Russell, described Herbert as having "served notably" (Sil, 116).
The widespread disturbances of summer 1549 did much to undermine Somerset's authority, and led to a political campaign to remove him from office. In this context it was of crucial importnace that Herbert and Russell commanded the largest field army in the country, one, moreover, that they were leading back towards London. Somerset himself, feeling the ground insecure under his feet, appreciated the potential significance of this force and tried to ensure its support, appealing three or four times to its leaders from 25 September onwards. But Herbert and Russell, having by 8 October marched as far as Andover, finally turned against the protector and withdrew to Wilton. In a letter sent to Somerset on that day they told him of their fears that if civil war broke out, "the querell once begonne will never ende tyll the realme by dyssendyd to that wofull Calamytie that all our posterytie shall lament the chaunce", and of their perception that "this great extremytie procedeth only upon pryvate causes" (Sil, 118). Their defection ruined the protector, who resigned his office and was sent to the Tower.
Herbert was swift to ally himself with John Dudley, earl of Warwick and later duke of Northumberland, who on 2 February 1550 became lord president of the council and effective head of the government. His rewards were substantial. As compensation for his expenditure in 1549 he was licensed on 28th October to have ?000 of fine silver turned into coin of the realm, an operation which brought him a profit of just over ?,700. On 2 December 1549 he was made master of the king's horse, and on 8 April 1550 he was appointed lord president of the council in the marches of Wales. To support himself in this new dignity he was granted lands worth 500 marks in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. He was indeed indefatigable in building up his estates, and bought properties (notably those of dissolved chantries) in many counties, and particularly in south Wales and Wiltshire. In his largest purchase, in co-operation with William Clerk of Punsborn, an outlay of ?0,000 in 1553 brought him estates in Wales and the English counties of Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire worth ?82 11s. 6d. per annum. Eventually the revenues from his lands, together with those from a number of valuable wardships and from the fees of his various offices, brought him an estimated annual income of betweeen ?,000 and ?,000.
Office and lands made Herbert a man of power in Wales, the grants of 1550-51 causing him to be described (by way of an arcane reference to a late eleventh-century ruler) as "the greatest lord that ever owned lands in Glamorgan either before or after Iestyn ap Gwagan's time" (Williams, Glamorgan, 31). In 1551 he was made lord lieutenant for all the Welsh counties, and it was far from inappropriate that having been ennobled as Baron Herbert of Cardiff on 10 October that year, he should have been further promoted to become earl of Pembroke on the following day. But probably even more improtnat to him were his estates, and his position, in Wiltshire. There he faced competition for pre-eminence both from successive barons Stourton, heads of a long-established county family, and from the Seymours. But the Stourtons increasingly lacked the means to compete, and the fall of Somerset left Herbert without an effective rival; his superiority was confirmed after the duke's execution in 1552, when Herbert received a large grant of Seymour lands in north Wiltshire. Men formerly in Somerest's affinity now acknowledged Herbert's superiority, and he acted as an arbitrator in local disuptes, including one involving the biship of Salisbury. Herbert's power-base in the county lay at Wilton, in the south of the county, where he gave visible expression to his power in a splendid house. According to tradition he consulted Holbein before starting to build, but the fact that Holbein died in 1543, whereas Herbert only acquired the freehold of Wilton in 1544, rules against the story. Herbert clearly took a close personal interest in the process of construction, for John Knox rebuked him for spending his time with masons and architects, instead of listening to sermons. The detail of the original house at Wilton is almost entirely lost (except perhaps for the arms of Henry VIII reset in the north front), but the overall shape of Herbert's house, quadrangled with two forecourts, has survived.
The earl of Pembroke was not a man to hid his light under a bushel; indeed his obvious liking for display seems to have been both an accompaniment to and a manifestation of a personal charisma which made men willing to follow him. From the early 1550's there are frequent references to the scale and splendour of his retinues and way of life. When the Scottish queen-dowager Mary of Guise visited London in November 1551, among her escort rode the earl of Pembroke with 100 horsemen, their "cotes gardy[d] with velvet, and chynes, hats and whyt fetheres, adn every [man] havying a new gayffelins [javelin] in ther hands, and a bage [badge]" (Diary of Henry Machyn, 11-12). Nearly a year later the young king was entertained by Pembroke at Wilton. The imperial ambassador was greatly impressed by the magnificence of the reception, the king being served off pure gold, the council and privy chamber off silver gilt, and the rest of the royal household off silver. When Edward left, his host presented him with "a very rich camp-bed, decorated with pearls and precious stones" (CSP Spain, 1550-52, 565-6). The ceremonies marking the death of his wife, who died at Baynard's Castle on 20 February 1552 and was buried in St. Paul's on the 28th, probably also reflect her husband's penchant for magnificence. Machyn records the funeral of "the good lade contes of Penbroke", attended by 100 poor men and women, by "mornars npyth lordes and knyghts", and by the heralds responsible for all the panoply of aristocratic exequies. She was interred beside John of Gaunt's tomb, "and after her banars wher sett up over her [and her] arnes sett on eyvers pelers" (Diary of Henry Machyn, 15-16). In 1554 Pembroke was reported to have 1000 men wearing his livery, and when he greeted Philip of Spain at Southampton that year, he was attended by a body of archers wearing the livery of the house of Aragon, and by 200 mounted gentlemen dressed in black velvet and wearing heavy gold chains.
Following Somerset's fall Herbert was closely involved in the earl of Warwick's government. In autumn 1549 he inventoried the royal chattels, and in April 1550 he was amont the privy councillors trusted by Warwick to keep order in the provinces. He was later one of a group of noblemen paid ?,000 per annum each to maintain 100 horsemen to that same end. In September 1551 he was also a member of an informal committee dealign with the currency and the king's debts, and presumably in that capacity helped to uncover teh shortcomings of Sir Martin Bowes, the under-treasurer of the Tower mint, in January 1551. Herbert and Warwick became earl and duke respectively on the same day, and it is a measure of the closeness of the two men that when Northumberland struck at the duke of Somerset in autumn 1551, Somerset's ally the twelfth earl of Arundel confessed that there had indeed been a plot to arrest both Pembroke and Northumberland, as well as the marquess of NOrthampton. Pembroke sate on the jury which condemned Somerest, despite the latter's objections. The rumours of a rift between Pembroke and Northumberland which in autumn 1552 circulated as far as Ireland seem to have been groundless, and in the following year Pembroke concurred in the plans made by Edward VI and Northumberland to divert the succession to the throne from Princess Mary to Lady Jane Grey; on 21 May 1553 Jane married the duke's son Guildford, and on the same day her sister Katherine married Henry Herbert (b. in or after 1538, d. 1601), Pembroke's son and heir. Pembroke subsequently signed both Edward's "device" for the limitation of the succession and the subsequent "engagement" undertaking to uphold it.
Northumberland is later said to have accused Pembroke of having thought up the scheme to make Jane queen. That is highly unlikely, but it seems clear that he went along with the plan as long as he reckoned it had any chance of success. He was a signatory of the letter to Mary of 9 July ordering her to cease resistance, and had Jane proclaimed queen at Beaumarais and Denbigh. He even stood godfatehr ,with Jane and her father, the duke of Suffolk, to the daughter of the ardent protestant Edward Underhill. But as support for Mary grew, Pembroke began to have second thoughts. After Northumberland had left London to confront Mary on 13 July, Arundel and Pembroke headed the party of defection. Their headquarters was Pembroke's house at Baynard's Castle, and there, after Arundel had made a lengthy oration on Mary's behalf, Pembroke made a much briefer one, concluding: "If my Lord of Arundell's perswasions cannot prevaile with you, eyther this sword shall make Mary Qwene, or Ile lose my life" (Nichols, 120). He and his supporters then proclaimed Mary in Cheapside.
At first Mary took more account of Pembroke's slowness to support her than of his eventual rallying to her cause. He was briefly placed under house arrest and lost his Welsh presidency, but was admitted to the privy council on 13 August 1553. He had his son's marriage annulled, but lost ground with the new queen for favouring her marriage to Edward Courtenay, rather than to Philip of Spain. His opportunity to win Mary's favour came on 1 February 1554, when he was appointed her "cheyfe capten and generall agauynst ser Thomas wyatt and ys felous" (Sil, 140-141).
Notwithstanding the cowradice and treachery of others, Pembroke kept his nerve and blocked the approaches to London, confident that Wyatt's men would lose heart and melt away - as they did. The earl was duly earmarked for rewards, but gave offence in the spring when he supported Baron Paget (another favourer of Courtenay over Philip) in opposing the heresy bill, out of fear of the consequences for lay holders of former ecclesiastical lands. Pembroke had already clashed with Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, on this issue. But he showed himself sufficiently confident of his position to come to parliament in November with all his old flamboyance, followed by 200 horsemen "in velvert cottes and cheynes, the cotes with iij lasses of gold, and lx reseduw in bluw cotes gardyd with velvet, and badge a gren dragon" (Diary of Henry Machyn, 74).
Pembroke's wealth, power, and experience probably made him indispensible to Mary's government. Early in 1555 he was once more made president of the council in Wales, and although he was pursued for debt in the exchequer chamber, he was ultimately pardoned his obligations. He also managed to gain the confidence of King Philip, albeit not without some difficulty, and was one of the noblemen who received a Spanish pension. He advocated the king's involvement in government, and may have favoured his coronation. In September 1555 he accompanied Philip to Brussels for a meeting with the latter's father, Charles V, and shortly afterwards was made governor of Calais. In religious matters he acted in accordance with his habitual Erastianism, defending Sir Edward Hastings when the latter spoke up for the government's bill against religious exiles, and alienating many of his own retainers in the process. Presumably they had expected him to act otherwise, but in fact the earl was following his long-held principles. Aubrey's story of Pembroke's restoring the nuns to Wilton is without foundation, but he did make at least a gesture towards Catholic restoration, when in January 1557 one Thomas Bowes made over to him the site of the former house of Observant Franciscans in Southampton, so that Pembroke could restore it to its former use; the friars returned briefly in 1558, but there is no evidence for Pembroke's involvement in this.
Pembroke's principal services to Mary's regime were military. In 1557 he was appointed to lead an English army of just over 7000 men to assist Philip's forces in northern France. His forces arrived too late to take part in the battle of St. Quentin on 10th August, but distinguished themselves in the capture of that town on the 27th. In the military emergency of 1558 that followed the loss of Calais, Pembroke was lieutenant for Wiltshire and Somerset. It was probably these commitments that made it impossible for him to attend to his responsibilities in Wales, for in August he wrote to the queen offering to resign as president of the council there, in response to her letters "stating that the Marches of Wales are in disorder for want of a president residing there" (CSP dom., 1547-80, 106. He was nevertheless sufficiently trusted by Mary to be named one of the executors of her will.
When Mary died on 17th November 1558 Pembroke proceeded to Hatfield, and there took part in what was in effect the first privy council meeting of Elizabeth's reign. Then when the new queen entered London on the 28th he bore the sword before her. He clearly had Elizabeth's trust and respect. He entertained her at Baynard's Castle in 1559 and 1562, and substituted for her at the St. George's day feast of 1560. A few days later he was one of the judges at a court joust, and risked injury when pieces of a shattered stave flew up and hit him. Politically he supported Sir William Cecil, the queen's secretary, at this time, both in favouring English intervention in Scotland in 1560, and in opposing suggestions that Elizabeth should marry Lord Robert Dudley in the following year. When the queen nearly died of smallpox in 1562, the Spanish ambassador reported that Pembroke supported the claims of the protestant earl of Huntingdon to the succession, which if true would suggest that the earl had adapted loyally to the new religious settlement. He also strengthened his links with the Talbot family. About May 1552 he married Anne (1524-1588), widow of Peter Compton and daughter of George Talbot, fourth earl of Shrewsbury. In 1563 his eldest son married Katherine, daughter of the sixth earl of Shrewsbury, while his daughter Anne married Lord Francis Talbot.
Pembroke's health deteriorated in the 1560's, and he was reported to be seriously ill in June 1560 and September 1564. But this did not stop his continuing pursuit of wealth, or his engagement in court politics. He was prepared to take risks for money. In 1552 he bought shares in the expedition led by Sir Hugh Willoughby which set off in pursuit of the north-east passage to China, and three years later was among the merchant adventurers of England for the discovery of lands unknown. In 1563 he invested in the "Jesus" of Lubeck, sailing to Africa and America, and shortly afterwards did the same for a slaving expedition led by John Hawkins. Closer to home, in 1568 he was a shareholder in the mines royal and mineral and battery companies, and may have been responsible for the establishment of carpet-weaving at Wilton, perhaps by fugitives from the Netherlands.
At court Pembroke moved increasingly into the camp of Robert Dudley, created earl of Leicester in 1564, and with him risked burning his fingers by involving himself in Anglo-Scottish politics. Made lord high steward of the royal household in 1568, in the same year Pembroke gave his support to proposals that the fugitive Mary, queen of Scots, should marry Thomas Howard, fourth duke of Norfolk, and then be restored to her throne with a husband acceptable to English interests. But when Elizabeth learned of the scheme in 1569 she would have nothing to do with it or its backers. Pembroke was briefly detained at court, but successfully pleaded his innocence and good intentions, and was soon allowed to retire to Wilton. But he was further embarrassed when the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland rose in revolt. They had their own reasons for favouring Mary's marriage to Norfolk, and now they claimed Pembroke as one of their backers. The earl protested his loyalty - "For God forbid I shoulde lieve the Howre, nowe in myne olde Age, to staine my former Lief with one Spott of Disloyaltie" (Sil, 175) - and Elizabeth was convinced, for he was named general of a large force levied to defend her at Windsor. But he was not required to take the field, and died at Hampton Court, aged 63, on 17th March 1570. The queee wrote a letter of condolence to his widow.
Pembroke had drawn up his will on 28th December 1567. He left ?00 for distribution to the poor in London, Salisbury, Wilton and Hendon. His daughter Anne was to have money and jewels worth 500 marks, his second son Edward 500 marks in plate and household stuff and ?00 in cash. His eldest son Henry was sole executor and residuary legatee. The four overseers of the will, who were to receive ?0 each, included Leicester and Sir Walter Mildmay. On the night before he died Pembroke added Sir James Croft and Sir William Cecil to the overseers, and made some further bequests: his wife was to have clothes, jewels, and ?00; the queen "his best jewell which he names his greate ballace and his newe faireste and richeste bedd". The earl's best and second-best gold swords were to go to Leicester and the marquess of Northampton respectively. Later still Pembroke made further provision for his wife, and remembered some of his servants, also advising his son to "entertaigne his householde and kepe them together" (Sil, 223). In 1567 he had required "such funerall solemnitie about my said burial as to myne estate and callinge apperteynethe and I will some honorable tome and monumente shalbe upon my bodie" (ibid., 220). If he died in London he asked for burial beside his first wife in St. Paul's, and there he was interred on 18 April. His exequies were of a piece with his life. The dean, Alexander Nowell, preached, his eldest son was chief mourner, and among those present were Cecil, Leicester, Mildmay, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and Bishop Edmund Grindal. His household turned out in force, including two chaplains, two secretaires, and his steward, treasurer, and comptroller. His monument, destroyed in 1666, commemorated both Pembroke and his first wife. Her virtues were said to have included religious devotion as well as conjugal fidelity, but her husband's epitaph listed only his secular honours and achievements, his services to four monarchs and above all his martial valour, at home and abroad.
Narasingha P. Sil.
In his youth he killed a man in a brawl in Bristol, escaped to France, returned to England 1534 and mar soon after, rose with the Parrs when Catherine mar Henry VIII 1543, knighted 1543, had been granted Wilton Abbey and lands by Henry VIII by 1544. A guardian of the young Edward VI after death of Henry VIII first as Baron Herbert of Cardiff (10 Oct 1551) then on the following day as 1st Earl of Pembroke by Edward VI, by the influence of his fellow Protestant John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, married his son to Lady Catherine Grey 1553 while Dudley married his son to Lady Jane Grey, managed to distance himself from Grey family after their fall. William Herbert's father was a bastard son of the Yorkist Earl of Pembroke who had been killed at Banbury in 1469 fighting against Warwick the King-maker. He was born in Monmouthshire according to John Aubrey, who calls him 'a mad fighting young fellow... [who] was a servant to the house of Worcester and wore their blue coat and badge'. Aubrey describes an incident, apparently at midsummer 1527, when Herbert got involved in a brawl at Bristol and on being arrested killed a man; he escaped from the town and eventull succeeded in reaching France, where he joined the royal army and 'showed so much courage and readiness of wit in conduct that in short time be became eminent and was favoured' by Francois I, who thought highly enough of him to recommend him to Henry VIII. How much truth there is in all of this is hard to tell but, although Herbert seems to have been out of England for several years after 1527, his detractors later commented on his total ignorance of French. When he reappears in 1535 he is found taking over some of the local offices of his kinsman Henry, 2nd Earl of Worcester, offices which were to give him much influence in Glamorgan: two years later he leased Abergavenny priory, Monmouthshire. He also made progress at court: granted an annuity of 46.13.04 in 1537, he was by 1540 a gentleman of the privy chamber and a member of the new royal bodyguard. It was in May 1540 that Herbert received his first important grant of property, a 21-year lease of the site of Wilton Abbey. He later acquired properties in Wiltshire, Cheshire, Devon, Dorset, the Isle of Wight, Somerset and Worcestershire. In Mar 1545 came the first inroad into Glamorgan, a lease of two lordships which had belonged to Jasper Tudor; it was followed in Aug 1546 by the leasing of the lordships of Miskyn and Glynhondda and the borough of Llantrisant, in Sep 1546 of the lordships of Neath Ultra and Neath Citra, the manor and borough of Neath and the town of Briton Ferry, and in the following Dec of another six Glamorgan lordships. This prodigious accumulation was the dividend of Herbert's marriage to the sister of Henry VIII's last Queen, which also earned him a knighthood in 1543, a place of honour in the campaign of 1544 and the privilege of reporting the capture of Boulogne to his sister-in-law, and finally a nomination as one of the 12 executors of the King's will and a legacy of 200 pounds. In the early years of Edward VI's reign Herbert was a leading Privy Councillor and a supported of the Protector Somerset, being named on the two surviving patents for the Protectorate. He seems to have co-operated with Somerset's brother, Admiral Seymour, in securing the return of their followers to Parliament. Herbert and Seymour had sat together in the Commons as knights of the shire for Wiltshire in 1545, and Seymour's marriage to Catherine Parr in the summer of 1547 had made them kinsmen. Many of their parliamentary clients were members of Catherine Parr's entourage. Herbert was a signatory of four Acts which were passed during the third session of the Parliament of 1547, those for a general pardon, for a churchyard in West Drayton, for the restitution of Sir William Herbert, and for the fine and ransom of the Duke of Somersert. Herbert's alliance with John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, began in 1549, shortly after he had helped to crush the western rebellion, where with Sir John Russell, Baron Russell, he was in command of the royal forces. It was their refusal to move to the support of Somersert in Oct that tipped the scales against the Protector. With his brother-in-law the Marquess of Northampton and with Warwick he became one of the leading men in the government who were determined to get rid of Somersert. On Oct 4, 1551 Warwick became Duke of Northumberland and a week later Herbert was created on successive days Baron Herbert of Cardiff and Earl of Pembroke. In Aug 1552 he was host to Edward at Wilton, and in May 1553, on the same day as Lady Jane Grey married Guildford Dudley, he concluded the marriage of his eldest son Henry to Lady Catherine Grey. During 1552 relations between Pembroke and Northumberland had cooled and when in Jul of that year Northumberland took him northwards on business some said 'it was because [one] does not trust the other' His failure in the autumn to answer a summons to court lent colour to these rumors, which persisted until the following spring. Whatever their origin, there was no outward dissent between the two men, and Pembroke supported the device to put Jane on the throne. If she had remained there he would have had a similar relationship to the crown as that he enjoyed after 1543; indeed Northumberland later tried to ascribe the idea of altering the succession to Pembroke.
Althouth Pembroke was with Jane at the Tower during her brief interlude, he was present when the lord mayor of London read Mary's proclamation at Cheapside.Retained on the Privy Council, he was at first suspect but cleared himself of the remaining doubts when he crushed Wyatt's rebellion. He had helped to organize the parliamentary opposition to the Spanish marriage and, until he was rebuked by the Queen, he had supported the Earl of Devon as a suitor for her hand.
Anne PARR, daughter of Sir Thomas PARR of Kendal ( -1517) and Maud GREEN ( -c. 1531), was born before 1514. She appeared in the census. She died in 1552. She and William Herbert, first Earl of Pembroke (2) had the following children:
| 4 | Maud HERBERT ( -bef1486). Maud died before 1486. |