Anne Herbert, Countess of Pembroke

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For other people with the same name, see Anne Herbert (disambiguation).
The Countess of Pembroke
Sir Thomas Parr
MotherMaud Green

Anne Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, Baroness Herbert of Cardiff (

Henry VIII of England's six wives. She was the younger sister of his sixth wife, Catherine Parr
.

Early years

Anne was born on 15 June 1515 to

Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset.[2]

A portrait thought to be of Anne Parr drawn by Hans Holbein the Younger[4]

At court

Sometime in 1528, Maud Green secured her 13-year-old daughter, Anne, a post at Court as maid-of-honour to Queen Catherine of Aragon. Anne was then made a

Prince Edward on 15 October 1537 and was part of the funeral cortege of Jane Seymour.[2]

When King Henry took as his fourth wife Anne of Cleves, Anne returned to her role as maid-of-honour, which she remained in when Queen Anne was supplanted by Catherine Howard. Following Queen Catherine's arrest for adultery, Anne Parr was entrusted with the Queen's jewels.[6]

Marriage

William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke
, Anne's husband

In February 1538, Anne married

William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke. It is likely that Anne met her husband at court. It is not known whether or not the marriage was a love match, but both Anne and her sister Catherine had been attracted to dashing men of action who were slightly disreputable.[2] The Herberts, due to King Henry's newly found infatuation for Catherine, appeared to be in the King's favour, as for the next few years Anne and her husband received a succession of Royal grants which included the Abbey of Wilton in Wiltshire (pulled down and built over for Wilton House in the 1540s), Remesbury (north Wiltshire), and Cardiff Castle. They also used Baynard's Castle as their London residence. Anne had three children by her husband: Henry, who succeeded his father; Edward Herbert; and Anne Herbert.[6] For the birth of her second son, Anne's sister loaned her the manor of Hanworth in Middlesex for her lying in. After the birth, Anne visited Lady Hertford, who had also just given birth, at Syon House near Richmond. In August, the queen sent a barge to bring Anne by river from Syon back to Westminster
.

Queen's sister

Anne Parr was a witness to the wedding ceremony performed at Hampton Court Palace on 12 July 1543, when King Henry married her sister Catherine. In September 1544, William Herbert was knighted on the battlefield at the Siege of Boulogne during the King's campaign against the French. Anne was her sister's chief lady-in-waiting and the sisters were close. Anne was also part of the clique of Protestants who surrounded the new Queen. In 1546, fellow Protestant Anne Askew was arrested for heresy. Those who opposed the Queen tried to gain a confession from Askew that the Queen, her sister, and the other women were Protestants. Queen Catherine and some of her closest friends had previously shown favour to the arrested woman. Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester; Thomas Wriothesley; and Richard Rich were involved in torturing Anne Askew and interrogating her about her connections to the ladies at court who were suspected to be Protestants, in particular: Anne Parr; the Queen; Katherine Willoughby; Anne Stanhope; and Anne Calthorpe, Countess of Sussex. Gardiner and Wriothesley obtained the King's permission to arrest and question the Queen about her religious beliefs.[2]

Catherine visited the King in his bedchamber and adroitly managed to persuade the King that her interest in the new religion had been undertaken solely as a means to provide stimulating conversation to distract the King from the pain caused by his ulcerous leg. Henry was appeased, and before the arrests were due to take place, he was reconciled to Catherine. On 28 January 1547, the King died. After Henry VIII's death, when the queen dowager's household was at Chelsea, both Anne and her son Edward were part of the household there. Her husband, William Herbert was appointed as one of the guardians to the new king,

puerperal fever
.

Later life

On 10 October 1551, Anne's husband was raised to the

Baron Herbert of Cardiff and on 11 October 1551 was created Earl of Pembroke. In 1553 he received the disgraced Duke of Somerset's Wiltshire estates, including Ramsbury and a newly built mansion at Bedwin Broil, as well as extensive woodland on the borders of the New Forest. The Herberts had been friends of Somerset until he fell from favour.[2] Herbert was also granted, on the attainder of Sir Thomas Arundell, Wardour Castle and park, and he obtained some property which had belonged to the diocese of Winchester. The Wardour property subsequently reverted to the Arundell family by exchange and purchase, but Pembroke's increase of wealth exceeded that of any of his colleagues.[7]

Anne died on 20 February 1552. At the time of her death, she was one of the ladies of the Lady Mary, the future Queen Mary I. William married as his second wife, Anne Talbot, but the marriage produced no children. Through her sons, Anne has many descendants, including the present-day Earls of Pembroke, Montgomery, and Carnarvon.[7]

Anne was buried on 28 February 1552 in the

John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster. Her husband died on 17 March 1570 and by his wish was also buried in St Paul's. Anne's memorial there described her in Latin
as "a most faithful wife, a woman of the greatest piety and discretion".

Issue

Anne Parr and William Herbert had three children:

Jewels

An inventory made in 1561 included the Countess's remaining possessions, and is now held by the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum.[9] The Countess of Pembroke had owned a gold mounted zibellino described as a "sabelles heade" set with 21 diamonds and a ruby in its mouth, with four gold claws. Other jewels included a gold girdle set with pearls and counterfeited rubies and sapphires, a locket or "tablet" with a portrait of Philip II of Spain and his father Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, another tablet with the initial "P", and two "books of gold". A "unicorn bone sett in golde" with a turquoise, two rubies, and two diamonds, was a charm against poisoning.[10]

Depictions in television and film

References

  1. ^ Besant, Sir Walter (1903), The Thames, London: A. & C. Black, pp. 84–87
  2. ^ a b c d e f Linda Porter. Katherine the Queen. Macmillan, 2010.
  3. ^ Anthony Martienssen "Queen Katherine Parr", page 21
  4. ^ James 2009, p.133, p. 322 fn. 56, "She may also have been the subject of one of Holbein's most expressive drawings, executed during the period Anne served as a gentlewoman of the queen's privy chamber. [56] <...> R.L. 12256"
  5. ^ Martienssen, pages64-5
  6. ^ a b Martienssen, page137
  7. ^ a b c Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney, eds. (1891). "Herbert, William (1501?-1570)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 26. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 220–223.
  8. ^ George Edward Cokayne, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, Vol. X, p. 643.
  9. ^ Natasha Awais-Dean, 'Jewellery', Erin Griffey, Early Modern Court Culture, (Routledge, 2022), 362.
  10. ^ Anna Somers Cocks, Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance (London, 1980), p. 132.
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