Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea

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For other persons, see Sidney Herbert (disambiguation).

Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bt
Personal details
Born(1810-09-16)16 September 1810
Died2 August 1861(1861-08-02) (aged 50)
NationalityBritish
Political party
Catherine Vorontsov
Alma materOriel College, Oxford

Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea,

PC (16 September 1810 – 2 August 1861) was a British statesman and a close ally and confidant of Florence Nightingale
.

Early life

He was the younger son of

Catherine Woronzow (or Vorontsov), daughter of the Russian ambassador to St James's, Semyon Vorontsov.[1] Woronzow Road in St John's Wood, London, is named after the family.[1] Educated at Harrow and Oriel College, Oxford, he made a reputation at the Oxford Union
as a speaker.

Career

Herbert entered the

House of Commons as Conservative Member of Parliament for a division of Wiltshire in 1832. Under Robert Peel he held minor offices, and in 1845 was included in the cabinet as Secretary at War. Herbert stayed loyal to Peel and was considered to be a Peelite or a Liberal Conservative. In 1852 he was appointed as Secretary at War in the coalition government of Lord Aberdeen from 1852 to 1854, being responsible for the War Office during the Crimean War. Herbert briefly held office in the first Lord Palmerston ministry in 1855 but resigned when the government agreed to an enquiry into the conduct of the government in the Crimean War. Herbert returned to office again as Secretary at War in 1859, by which time the post had been combined with the office of Secretary of State for War
.

Herbert was a member of the Canterbury Association from 20 March 1848.[2]

He ran the Pembroke family estates, centred at Wilton House, Wiltshire, for most of his adult life. His elder half-brother, Robert Herbert, 12th Earl of Pembroke (1791–1862), had chosen to live in exile in Paris after a disastrous marriage in 1814 (annulled 1818) to a Sicilian princess (Ottavia Spinelli di Laurino, Princess of Butera).[3]

Herbert asked his friend Florence Nightingale to lead a team of nurses out to Scutari during the Crimean War, and together he and Nightingale led the movement after the war for Army health and reform of the War Office. The hard work entailed caused a breakdown in his health, so that in July 1861, having been created a baron in the peerage of the United Kingdom, he had to resign government office.

Personal life

49 Belgrave Square, London, Herbert's home from 1851
Stipple engraving by W. Holl after G. Richmond

In the early 1840s, Herbert is thought to have had an affair with the noted society beauty and author

Caroline Norton, who was unable to get a divorce from an abusive husband, so that the relationship ended in 1846.[4]

In 1846 Herbert married

Roman Catholic
, along with their eldest daughter, Mary.

Sidney and Elizabeth Herbert lived at 49 Belgrave Square, London, and had seven children:

  1. Mary Catherine (1849–1935), who m. 1873 the great modernist theologian, Baron (Freiherr) Friedrich von Hügel.
  2. George Robert Charles Herbert (1850–1895), who succeeded in the title and later became the 13th Earl of Pembroke, and the barony is now merged in that earldom.
  3. Elizabeth Maud (1851–1933), who m. 1872 the composer, Sir Charles Hubert Parry, 1st Baronet (son of Thomas Gambier Parry), of Highnam Court, near Gloucester.
  4. Sidney Herbert (1853–1913), also a Member of Parliament, who succeeded his brother as the 14th Earl of Pembroke.
  5. William Reginald Herbert (1854–1870), lost at sea aboard HMS Captain, aged 16.
  6. Lord Pauncefote. He m. 1888 Lelia "Belle", daughter of Richard Thornton Wilson, a New York banker and cotton broker, and had (with one other son) Sir Sidney Herbert, 1st Baronet
    .
  7. Frederick Oliver Robinson, the Earl de Grey, later 2nd and last Marquess of Ripon
    (no issue).

Death and memorials

Statue of Lord Herbert of Lea at Waterloo Place, London

Herbert died from

neo-Romanesque style, with inside the church a marble monumental effigy of him beside Elizabeth, his wife (who, however, was buried at St Joseph's Missionary College, Mill Hill
, where she was a notable patron).

His statue by Foley was placed in front of the War Office in

Crimean Monument.[5]

Another statue to him stands in Victoria Park, Salisbury, Wiltshire.[6] There is also a memorial to him on Inchkeith island in the Firth of Forth, which commemorates his advocacy for fortifying the island.[7]

Mount Herbert by the chief surveyor of the Canterbury Association, Joseph Thomas, in 1849.[2][8] The Otago surveyor's office renamed the town of Wanaka to Pembroke in 1863.[9]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Woronzow, HumphrysFamilyTree, accessed 4 April 2012
  2. ^ a b Blain, Rev. Michael (2007). The Canterbury Association (1848–1852): A Study of Its Members' Connections (PDF). Christchurch: Project Canterbury. pp. 42–43. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
  3. ^ Doyle, J. E. (1886). Pembroke-Zetland. The Official Baronage of England. Longmans, Green, and Company. p. 37. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  4. ^ Woodham-Smith, Cecil. Florence Nightingale, 1820–1910. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1951, p. 221 at archive.org
  5. ^ Historic England. "Statue of Lord Herbert of Lea (1239318)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
  6. ^ Historic England. "Statue of Sidney Herbert (1243322)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
  7. ^ Historic Environment Scotland. "Inchkeith Island, Memorial to Lord Herbert of Lea (LB9708)". Retrieved 7 October 2021.
  8. ^ Hight, James; C.R. Straubel (1957). A History of Canterbury. Vol. I: to 1854. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. p. 121.
  9. ^ Dovey, Pam (13 June 2017). "Irish street names in Wanaka". Wanaka Sun. Wanaka Sun. Retrieved 31 July 2021.

Sources

  • Sir Tresham Lever, The Herberts of Wilton (Murray, 1967)
  • Burke's Peerage, 107th edition
  • Mark Bostridge, Florence Nightingale. The Woman and Her Legend (Viking, 2008)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea.
Parliament of the United Kingdom
New constituency Member of Parliament for South Wiltshire
1832–1861
With: John Benett to 1852
William Wyndham 1852–1859
Lord Henry Thynne from 1859 		Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by
Joint Secretary to the Board of Control

1834–1835 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
First Secretary of the Admiralty

1841–1845 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Secretary at War
1845–1846 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Secretary at War
1852–1854 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Secretary of State for the Colonies
1855 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Secretary of State for War
1859–1861 		Succeeded by
Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bt
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation Baron Herbert of Lea
1861 		Succeeded by
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