William Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke

Who was William Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke?

William Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke was the son of William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke and Anne Devereux. His maternal grandparents were Walter Devereux, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Elizabeth Merbury.

He succeeded his father in the earldom in 1469. In 1479, he surrendered the earldom, and was created Earl of Huntingdon. A Yorkist, he married Mary Woodville, sister of the queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and they had one daughter, Elizabeth Herbert, 3rd Baroness Herbert.

He was the least wealthy of the earls of his time, and after his marriage to his second wife, Katherine, a natural daughter of King Richard III of England in 1484, he received an annuity of some 600 pounds a year, nearly doubling his income. Katherine is presumed to have died by 1487, because when William participated in the coronation of his first wife's niece, Elizabeth of York, he was noted to have been a widower.

Herbert remained loyal to Richard III. After the rebellion of 1483 he received the post of Chief Justice of South Wales, which had been the Duke of Buckingham's.

When Henry of Richmond landed in south Wales in 1485 Herbert's position forced Henry to take a roundabout route into England. It is likely that a Herbert agent first notified Richard III of Henry's landing. Herbert did not, however, fight at Bosworth.