HERBERT OF CHERBURY, EDWARD HERBERT, BARON (1583-1648), English soldier, diplomatist, historian and religious philosopher, eldest son of Richard Herbert of Mont gomery Castle (a member of a collateral branch of the family of the earls of Pembroke), was born at Eyton-on-Severn on March 3, 1583, and educated at University college, Oxford. On the acces sion of James I. he presented himself at court and was created a knight of the Bath in 1603. In 16o8 he went to Paris where he was entertained by Henry IV. In 1610 he served as a volunteer in the Low Countries under the prince of Orange, whose intimate friend he became, and distinguished himself at the capture of Juliers from the emperor. He then travelled in Italy, and two years after his return to England in 1617, Buckingham made him ambassador at Paris, but a quarrel with de Luynes occasioned his recall in 1621. After the death of de Luynes, Herbert resumed his post in Feb. 1622, and tried to accomplish the union between Charles and Henrietta Maria and secure the assistance of Louis XIII. for the unfortunate elector palatine. On being dismissed in April 1624, he received the Irish peerage of Castle island in 1624 and the English barony of Cherbury, or Chirbury, in 1629.
In 1632 he was appointed a member of the council of war. He attended the king at York in 1639, and in May 1642 was im prisoned by the parliament for urging the addition of the words "without cause" to the resolution that the king violated his oath by making war on parliament. He retired to Montgomery Castle, and declined the king's summons. On Sept. 5, 1644, he surrendered the castle to the parliamentary forces. He died in London on Aug. 20, 1648.
Lord Herbert's most important work is the De veritate grout distinguitur a revelations, a verisimile, a possibile et o f also (1624) which combines a theory of knowledge with a partial psychology, a methodology for the investigation of truth, and a scheme of natural religion. His other writings include the De religiose gentilium (1663), a natural history of religion ; Expeditio Buckinghami ducis (1656) ; Life and Raigne of Henry V III. (1649) based on authentic papers; a volume of poems (1665) and an autobiography, first published by Horace Walpole in 1764, and edited by Sidney Lee (1886, end ed. 1907) . His English and Latin poems have been recently edited by G. C. Moore Smith (Oxford, 1923).