By C. K Straton. 



289 



painted in the actual records of that time. It has been my good 

 fortune, by the courtesy of the Earl of Pembroke, to have had an 

 opportunity of studying the survey of those manors which form 

 the lordship of Wilton and which were granted by Henry VIII. to 

 Sir William Herbert, afterwards the first Earl of Pembroke. I 

 shall, therefore, use the contents of this survey to illustrate what 

 English Manorial customs were at that period, and if time permits 

 I will try to show how those customs had originated and from 

 what earlier political conditions they had sprung. Every manor 

 had its lord, and we may study the lord of the manor as he is seen 

 in William, the first Earl of Pembroke, who was in every way one 

 of the most remarkable and successful men of his time. His father, 

 Sir Eichard Herbert, of Ewyas, was Gentleman Usher to Henry VII., 

 who appointed him Constable of Bergevenny Castle in Monmouth- 

 shire. Sir Richard died when William was only nine years old, 

 and his kinsman, Charles Somerset, afterwards the first Earl of 

 Worcester, was granted the wardship of the boy, and was made 

 the Constable of Bergevenny Castle. Charles Somerset was 

 Captain of the Guard, Lord of Chepstowe and Raglan Castles, and 

 the King's Chamberlain, and in becoming his Valettus William 

 Herbert took his first step in the career of chivalry. The young 

 page had to attend his lord and his lady in the hall and follow 

 them to court, picking up the rudiments of love and war which 

 then formed the strangely-blended curriculum of a gentle education. 

 By the ladies of the castle he was taught his catechism and the 

 art of love. He was brought up to regard some lady of the court 

 as the type of his future mistress, and to her he was obedient, 

 faithful, and courteous. By the squires he was taught military 

 exercises, to blow a martial note, to leap trenches, to breast a spear, 

 or sustain a shield. Then, when he had spent seven years in this 

 way, he became a squire, waiting on his lord at table and in the 

 field. This was the kind of training through which William Herbert 

 passed, and in 1526 he had become, like his kinsman and lord, 

 attached to the court. His name then appears as drawing the 

 salary of a Gentleman Pensioner and Esquire of the body of King 

 Henry VIII. Aubrey tells us something of his appearance and 



