HERBERT (FAMILY). Earlier generations of a pedigree which carries the origin of the Herberts to Herbert the Chamber lain, a Domesday tenant, being disregarded, their patriarch may be taken to be one Jenkin ap Adam (temp. Edward III.), who had a small Monmouthshire estate at Llanvapley and the office of master sergeant of the lordship of Abergavenny, a place which gave him precedence after the steward of that lordship.
Sir William Herbert, called by the Welsh Gwilim Ddu or Black William, was a baron in 1461 and a Knight of the Garter in the following year. With many manors and castles on the Marches he had the castle, town and lordship of Pembroke, and after the attainder of Jasper Tudor in 1468 was created earl of Pembroke. When in July 1469 he was taken by Sir John Conyers and the northern Lancastrians on Hedgecote, he was beheaded with his brother Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook. The second earl while still a minor exchanged at the king's desire in his earldom of Pembroke for that of Huntingdon. In 1484 this son of one whom Hall not unjustly describes as born "a mean gentleman" contracted to marry Katharine the daughter of King Richard III., but her death annulled the contract and the earl married Mary, daughter of the Earl Rivers, by whom he had a daughter Elizabeth, whose descendants, the Somersets, lived in the Herbert's castle of Raglan until the cannon of the parliament broke it in ruins. With the second earl's death in 1491 the first Herbert earldom became extinct. The ancestor of the present earls of Pembroke and Carnarvon and of the Herbert who was created marquess of Powis was a natural son of the first earl, one Richard Herbert, whom the restored inscription on his tomb at Abergavenny incorrectly describes as a knight. He was con stable and porter of Abergavenny Castle, and his son William, "a mad fighting fellow" in his youth, married a sister of Catherine Parr and thus in 1543 became nearly allied to the king, who made him one of the executors of his will. The earldom of Pem broke was revived for him in 1551.
The honours and titles of this clan of marchmen make a long list. They include the marquessate of Powis, two earldoms with the title of Pembroke, two with that of Powis, and the earldoms of Huntingdon and Montgomery, Torrington and Carnarvon, the viscountcies of Montgomery and Ludlow, fourteen baronies and seven baronetcies. Seven Herberts have worn the Garter. The knights and rich squires of the stock can hardly be reckoned, more especially as they must be sought among Raglans, Morgans, Parrys, Vaughans, Progers, Hugheses, Thomases, Philips, Powels, Gwyns, Evanses and Joneses, as well as among those who have borne the surname of Herbert, a surname which in the 19th cen tury was adopted by the Joneses of Llanarth and Clytha, although they claim no descent from those sons of Sir William ap Thomas for whom it was devised.