84 Some Notice of William Herbert, 



this, Mr. Morgan says, " It is remarkable that so able a man as Sir 

 R. C. Hoare, who had visited Monmouthshire in company with 

 Archdeacon Coxe, and made many of the drawings for his tour of 

 the county, should have made so great a mistake, and fallen into 

 such an error, for on the Ewyas monument that word is most distinct; 

 that being, in fact, the only monument of the series which has any 

 inscription/' 



"William Herbert was born in 15 06 : of his early history little is 

 known. Aubrey says, " he was a mad fighting young fellow," and 

 then gives an account of a strange adventure which befel him at 

 Bristol in 1527 ; this is in the main correct, but the details are more 

 fully given by the Bristol historians. On Midsummer night in 

 that year there was a great fray made by the Welshmen on the 

 king's watch, and on the following St. James's day, the mayor and 

 his brethren returning from a wrestling match, a dispute arose in 

 which one Richard Vaughan, a mercer, was killed on the bridge by 

 William Herbert, the cause being, " a want of some respect in com- 

 pliment/' He escaped through the great gate towards the marsh, 

 where a boat being prepared and the tide ebbing he got into Wales, 

 and afterwards went to France ; where, according to Aubrey, he 

 betook himself into the army and showed so much courage and 

 readiness of wit in conduct that he was favoured by the king, who 

 afterwards recommended him to Henry VIII. 



His marriage with Ann, daughter of Sir Thomas Parr, must have 

 had an important influence on his career. Sir Thomas Parr, who 

 died in 1517, had three children — William, afterwards Marquis of 

 Northampton, Katharine, and Ann ; he left all his extensive manors 

 to his wife for life. He willed his daughters, Katharine and Ann, 

 to have eight hundred pounds between them, as marriage portions, 

 except they proved to be his heirs or his sons' heirs.' Four hundred 

 pounds, Ann's moiety, would be scarcely equal to £2000 in these 

 days, and seems but an inadequate dowry for the daughter of parents 

 so lichly endowed as Sir Thomas and Lady Parr. Both Katharine 



* This afterwards happened to Lady Herbert's son. The Marquis of Northamp- 

 ton, says Dugdale, dying without issue, Heniy, Earl of Pembroke (his nephew 

 by one of his sisters), became his next heir. 



