To the University itself the King at length came, where it was Herbert’s duty, as often as James could spare time from his sports at Newmarket and Royston, to welcome him with “gratulations and the applauses of an orator,” which “he performed so well, that he still grew more and more into the King’s favour.”{1} It was during these progresses that Herbert became acquainted with Lord Bacon and Bishop Andrews—an acquaintance that ripened into an intimacy which only ceased with the poet’s death. With Sir Henry Wotton, also, he was on terms of close friendship; and Donne esteemed him so highly, that on his deathbed he bequeathed to the son of the “Lady Magdalen” a seal, bearing the figure of Christ crucified on an anchor, and the motto, “Crux mihi anchora.”
Herbert seems at this period to have been exceedingly solicitous for Court preferment, and with this view to have become an assiduous student of foreign languages. But his hopes were blasted by the death of James, who had, however, previously bestowed upon his favourite a sinecure, once the property of Sir Philip Sydney. With the profits arising from his post, which were valued at £120 a-year, an annuity which he enjoyed from his family, and the income he derived from his College and his Oratorship, Herbert was enabled to gratify what Walton calls his genteel humour for clothes and court-like company. How long he resided in London is not known. But shortly after the King’s death he retired into Kent, “where he lived very privately, and was such a lover of solitariness as was judged to impair his health nore than his study had done. In this time of retirement he had many conflicts with himself, whether he should return to the painted pleasures of a court-life, or betake himself to the study of divinity, and enter into sacred orders, to which his dear mother had often persuaded him. These were such conflicts as they only can know that have endured them; for ambitious desires and the outward glory of this world are not easily laid aside; but at last God inclined him to put on a resolution to serve at his altar.”{2}
It was on his return to London that this resolution was first announced. The date of his ordination is unknown; but Walton discovered, from the records of Lincoln, that the prebend of Layton Ecclesia, in that diocese, was conferred upon him by Bishop Williams in the summer of 1626. At the period of his appointment, the parish church of Layton was in so dilapidated a condition that the parishioners could not meet in it for public worship. Herbert’s first step was to undertake its restoration, and “he lived,” says Walton, “to see it so wainscotted as to be exceeded by none.”
In 1627 he lost his mother, who, in the twelfth year of her widowhood, had married the brother and heir of the Earl of Danby. For years before her death she seems to have suffered much; but she had a tender consoler in her son. “For the afflictions of the body, dear madam,” he wrote, in a letter still extant, “remember the holy martyrs of God, how they have been burned by thousands, and have endured such other tortures as the very mention of them might beget amazement; but their fiery trials have had an end; and yours, which, praised be God, are less, are not like to continue long. I beseech you, let such thoughts as these moderate your present fear and sorrow; and know, that if any of yours should prove a Goliah-like trouble, yet you may say with David, ‘That God, who delivered me out of the paws of the lion and bear, will also deliver me out of the hands of this uncircumcised Philistine.’ Lastly, for those afflictions of the soul; consider that God intends that to be as a sacred temple for Himself to dwell in, and will not allow any room there for such an inmate as grief, or allow that any sadness shall be his competitor. And, above all, if any care of future things molest you, remember those admirable words of the Psalmist,—‘Cast thy care on the Lord, and he shall nourish thee.’”{3}
Two years later, when Herbert was in his thirty-ninth year, he was himself seized with quotidian ague, and for change of air removed to Woodford, in Essex, where his brother, Sir Henry Herbert, and some other friends were residing. At Woodford ho remained about a year, and by “forbearing drink, and not eating any meat,” he cured himself of his disorder, although a tendency to consumption now began to manifest itself. To counteract this tendency, he removed to Dauntsey in Wiltshire, a seat of the Earl of Danby. There, by a spare diet, moderate exercise, and abstinence from study, his health apparently improved. He therefore, in compliance with the long-expressed wishes of his mother, determined to marry and enter on the priesthood. The story of his courtship is curious. There resided near Dauntsey a gentleman named Danvers, a near kinsman of Herbert’s friend Lord Danby. Mr. Danvers had a family of nine daughters, and had often and publicly expressed a wish that Herbert would marry one of them, “but rather his daughter Jane than any other, because his daughter Jane was his favourite daughter.” “And he had often said the same to Mr. Herbert himself; and that if he could like her for a wife, and she him for a husband, Jane should have a double blessing: and Mr. Danvers had so often said the like to Jane, and so much commended Mr. Herbert to her, that Jane became so much a Platonic as to fall in love with Mr. Herbert unseen.” “This,” adds Walton, from whom we have been quoting, “was a fair preparation for a marriage; but alas! her father died before Mr. Herbert’s retirement to Dauntsey: yet some friends to both parties procured their meeting; at which time a mutual affection entered into both of their hearts, as a conqueror enters into a surprised city: and love having got such possession, governed, and made there such laws and resolutions, as neither party was able to resist; insomuch that she changed her name into Herbert the third day after this first interview.” The marriage proved eminently happy; for, as Walton beautifully says, “the Eternal Lover of mankind made them happy in each other’s mutual and equal affections and compliance; indeed, so happy, that there never was any opposition betwixt them, unless it were a contest which should most incline to a compliance with the other’s desires. And though this begot, and continued in them, such a mutual love, and joy, and content, as was no way defective; yet this mutual content, and love, and joy, did receive a daily augmentation by such daily obligingness to each other, as still added new affluences to the former fulness of these divine souls, as was only improvable in heaven, where they now enjoy it.”
About three months after the marriage, the rectory of Bemerton, in Wiltshire, fell vacant through the elevation of the incumbent, Dr. Curll, to the see of Bath and Wells. Through the influence of the Earl of Pembroke with the King, the living was offered to Herbert. Not without much prayer and fasting did he at last accept it. “And in this time of considering he endured, as he would often say, such spiritual conflicts as none can think but only those that have endured them.”{4}
At length, principally through the interposition of Laud, then Bishop of London, Herbert was prevailed upon to lay his presentation before the Bishop of Salisbury, who at once gave him institution. Walton tells an interesting story in connection with the induction. Being shut up in the church to toll the bell, as the law then required, he staid so much longer than the ordinary time that his friends became anxious, and one of them, Mr. Woodnot, looking in at the church window, saw him lie prostrate on the ground before the altar. Not for some time was it known that he was then setting rules for the government of his life, and making a vow to keep them.
And now commenced the most interesting period of Herbert’s life. The care of his parish became the engrossing topic of his thoughts. From repairing the parish church and rebuilding the parsonage house, he turned away to give rules to himself and his parishioners, “for their Christian carriage both to God and man.” How he laboured in his vocation, and how his labours were so blest, that, while the better class of his parishioners, and many of the neighbouring gentry, were attending on his daily ministrations in the church, “some of the meaner sort did so love him, that they would let their plough rest when Mr. Herbert’s saints’-bell