Keele Research Repository

This study of the estates and finances of William Herbert is prefaced by an introductory chapter on the Herbert family, which attempts to place the baron's career in its familial context and emphasize the extent to which William's achievement was also that of his family. Chapter 1 also seeks to outline the circumstances of Herbert's rise to prominence as a Mortimer administrator and lieutenant of Edward IV, as well as the failing fortunes of his family after his death in 1469. The Herbert family's advancement - at first steady and then, under Edward IV, spectacular - was, to a great extent, effected by and mirrored in its accumulation of lands; the decline from the 1470's on was conversely accompanied by the loss of estates. This pattern is examined with the help of some of the family's private deeds in the appendix to Chapter 1.