Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke
Lt.-Gen. Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke, 6th Earl of Montgomery
Life
Studying at
He was appointed
Upon the accession of George II in 1727, Herbert remained his close associate, and was made first lord of the bedchamber. After acceding to the earldom on 9 January 1733, Pembroke left the Horse Guards and was appointed colonel of
He shared his father's antiquarian tastes (commissioning
The mason William Townsend executed the Earl's design for the Column of Victory, at Blenheim Palace and the water tower at Houghton Hall.[8] The Earl also inspected Townsend's design of Westcombe House, Blackheath, Kent (1727–28) and as well as parts of the design of Castle Hill, Devon (1729). He also redecorated a few of the rooms in the south front of Wilton House. Though he was uninvolved in its design, he also acted as an energetic promoter of the project to build Westminster Bridge, getting the relevant Act of Parliament through in 1738, laying the first stone in January 1739 (and the last stone of the main structure in 1747), attending 120 meetings of the bridge commissioners (the last on the morning of his death), and consistently supporting its designer Charles Labelye and his caisson design against long and fierce opposition (after the subsidence of one pier in 1747, The Downfall of Westminster Bridge, or, My Lord in the Suds mocked him for this support, but he was ultimately vindicated).
Lord Pembroke enjoyed swimming, played tennis every day, generally remained continually active and healthy, and (as seen in
Diet
Herbert attempted to live on a diet of only beetroot and watercress which he kept in a bag wig and used as a knapsack.[9][10] In 1729, he was seen walking the streets of Paris with his bag wig eating beetroot and watercress at regular intervals.[9] He nearly died because of the diet.[10]
He has been described as a "pioneer vegetarian" and a "proto-vegan".[10][11] James Lees-Milne noted that Herbert "became a fanatical vegetarian to the extent of practically starving himself to death."[9]
Marriage and issue
He and Mary FitzWilliam (eldest daughter of Richard FitzWilliam, 5th Viscount FitzWilliam and Frances Shelley), married on 28 August 1733. They only had one child, Henry, who inherited his father's earldoms. When the Fitzwilliam family died out in the male line in 1833, the Pembroke family inherited large estates in Dublin; they are still substantial landowners there.[citation needed]
Gallery of architectural works
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Column of Victory, Blenheim Palace -
Marble Hill House -
Palladian bridge -
White Lodge
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References
- ^ a b c Doyle, James William Edmund (1885). The Official Baronage of England vol. III. London: Longmans, Green. p. 34. Retrieved 5 June 2008.
- ^ Geograph
- ^ pages 67–71; Chapter II, Henry Herbert 9th Earl of Pembroke; Earls of Creation: Five Great Patrons of Eighteenth-Century Art, James Lees-Milne, 1962, Hamish Hamilton
- ^ Works, 3.486
- ^ Letters of a grandmother: being the correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, with her granddaughter Diana, duchess of Bedford, ed. G. Scott Thomson (1943), page 54
- ^ page 473, The Buildings of England Oxfordshire, Jennifer Sherwood & Nikolaus Pevsner, 1974, Penguin Books
- ^ Nikolaus Pevsner says of the White Lodge's neo-Palladianism that it "shows the style at its worst in a mechanical imitation of one of Palladio-Burlington's ideas" (Pevsner, Surrey (The Buildings of England) 191971:55.
- ^ page 163, Blenheim Palace, David Green 1951, Country Life
- ^ a b c Lees-Milne, James. (1962). Earls of Creation: Five Great Patrons of Eighteenth-century Art. Penguin Books. p. 67
- ^ ISBN 978-0593076019
- ^ The Literary Review, 2006.
External links
- "Herbert, Henry". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13033. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
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