In bringing up the report of the Sebastopol Committee, 17 July 1855, Mr. Roebuck said of him ‘no man could have been more intent upon the honour of his country and on performing the duties of his office. He was conscientiously endeavouring to perform his duty, and was always at his post.’
During the session of 1856 he gained more in parliamentary estimation than did any other member. Though nominally only one of the ‘Peelites,’ and anxious to maintain the separate existence of that party, he was already talked of as a possible prime minister. He took the lead in the movement for army reform which succeeded the Crimean war, and was the mainspring of the royal commission on the sanitary condition of the army. He drafted its report, and wrote an article upon it in the ‘Quarterly Review,’ No. 105, p. 155. At his suggestion and with his assistance, four supplementary commissions were issued, namely on hospitals and barracks, on the army medical department, on army medical statistics, and on the medical school at Chatham, and he drafted the code of regulations for the army medical department which appeared in October 1859. When Lord Palmerston returned to power in June 1859 Herbert took office as secretary for war. It now fell to him to complete the reorganisation of that office, and especially to work out the transfer of the Indian army to the crown, to develope and encourage the volunteer movement, and to deal with the necessity for adopting rifled ordnance. This triple task involved immense labour, which rapidly told upon his health. Bright's disease made its appearance, and although advised that only rest could save him, he refused to quit his post. In 1860 he was persuaded to accept a peerage as some step towards relieving the strain of his office, and he was raised to the House of Lords as Baron Herbert of Lea. The relief came too late. In July he was compelled to resign his office. He visited Spa in vain, was brought home to Wilton House, Salisbury, and died three days after his return on 2 Aug. 1861. ‘He was just the man to rule England,’ wrote Lord Houghton, on hearing the news; ‘birth, wealth, grace, tact, and not too much principle’ (Reid, Life of Houghton, ii. 72). The last words are scarcely just. With every advantage of wealth, mental cultivation, a generous and sanguine temper combined with strong natural caution, fine appearance and manners, considerable eloquence and great industry, Herbert would certainly have achieved the highest political dignity, had not his determination to retrieve during his second administration of the army the misfortunes of his first sacrificed his health to unremitting devotion to duty. In private life he was munificently charitable. He and his wife erected a model lodging-house at Wilton for agricultural labourers, and took a personal share in promoting emigration. Both on his Wiltshire estates and at Donnybrook, near Dublin, he laid out large sums in improvements, and built or contributed to build many churches, especially that at Wilton, upon which he spent 30,000l., and one at Sandymount, near Dublin. He published in 1849, privately, a pamphlet on the ‘Better Application of Cathedral Institutions.’ He married, on 12 Aug. 1846, Elizabeth, daughter of General Ashe A'Court, by whom he had seven children, of whom George Robert Charles, born 1850, succeeded him.
At a public meeting, held 25 Nov. 1861, it was resolved to erect a statue of him by J. H. Foley, R.A., which was placed in front of the war office, Pall Mall, and inaugurated 1 June 1867, and to found exhibitions in his memory at the Army Medical School, Chatham, which had been established under his auspices.
[Letters of Sir G. Cornewall Lewis; Life of Bishop Wilberforce; Ann. Reg. 1861; Times, 3 Aug. 1861; Harriet Martineau's Biog. Sketches; Recollections of Lord Malmesbury; E. Forçade in Revue des Deux Mondes, November 1858; Fraser's Mag. 1861.]
HERBERT, THOMAS (1597–1642?), seaman and author, sixth and posthumous son of Richard Herbert, by Magdalen, daughter of Sir Richard Newport, and brother of Edward, first lord Herbert of Cherbury [q. v.], was born at Montgomery on 15 May 1597. He served as page to Sir Edward Cecil [q. v.] in Germany, and distinguished himself by his gallantry at the siege of Juliers in 1610. In 1616 he took service under Captain Benjamin Joseph, commander of the Globe, East Indiaman. When Joseph was killed in an engagement with a Portuguese carack, Herbert assumed the command, and eventually beat off and disabled the enemy. He pursued his voyage to Surat, arriving there in March 1617. Thence he went up the country to Mandow, where the great mogul kept his court. He returned in the autumn to Surat, and to England next year. Herbert served under Sir Robert Mansel [q. v.] in the expedition to Algiers (1620-1), and commanded the ship which brought Prince Charles home from Spain in October 1623. He also carried Count Mansfeldt from Dover to Flushing on his expedition for the recovery of the Palatinate, January 1624-5, when he lost the ship near the Dutch coast, but got Mansfeldt ashore
