several offices in Wales and enormous grants of abbey-lands in some of
the southern counties. In the year 1554, the 37th of his age, we find
him considerable enough to procure the king's license "to retain thirty
persons at his will and pleasure, over and above such persons as
attended on him, and to give them his livery, badges, and cognizance."
The king's marriage with Catherine Parr, his wife's sister, increased
his consequence, and Henry on his death-bed appointed him one of his
executors and a member of the young king's council. He was actively
useful in the beginning of Edward's reign in keeping down commotions in
Wales and suppressing some which had arisen in Wiltshire and
Somersetshire. This service obtained for him the office of master of the
horse; and that more important service which he afterwards performed at
the head of one thousand Welshmen, with whom he took the field against
the Cornish rebels, was rewarded by the garter, the presidency of the
council for Wales, and a valuable wardship. He figured next as commander
of part of the forces in Picardy and governor of Calais, and found
himself strong enough to claim of the feeble protector as his reward the
titles of baron Herbert and earl of Pembroke, become extinct by the
failure of legitimate heirs. As soon as his sagacity prognosticated the
fall of Somerset, he judiciously attached himself to the rising fortunes
of Northumberland. With this aspiring leader it was an object of prime
importance to purchase the support of a nobleman who now appeared at the
head of three hundred retainers, and whose authority in Wales and the
southern counties was equal, or superior, to the hereditary influence of
the most powerful and ancient houses. To engage him therefore the more
firmly in his interest, Northumberland proposed a marriage between
Pembroke's son lord Herbert and lady Catherine Grey, which was
solemnized at the same time with that between lord Guildford Dudley and
the lady Jane her eldest sister.

But no ties of friendship or alliance could permanently engage Pembroke
on the losing side; and though he concurred in the first measures of the
privy-council in behalf of lady Jane's title, it was he who devised a
pretext for extricating its members from the Tower, where Northumberland
had detained them in order to secure their fidelity, and, assembling
them in Baynard's castle, procured their concurrence in the proclamation
of Mary. By this act he secured the fa