HERBERT, Sir Thomas, an English traveller of the seventeenth century, was a scion of the house of Pembroke, and was born at York about 1606. He was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge. On quitting the university in 1621, he was attached, through the influence of the head of his family, to the English embassy which Charles I. was at that time sending to the Shah of Persia. Arriving at Ormus he travelled overland to the Caspian Sea, where the Shah happened to be. Though at first cordially received, he soon found it necessary to retrace his steps. Leaving Casbin with the survivors of the party, he returned to Ispahan, reached Bagdad, sailed down the Tigris, and then coasted along the Indian shores to Surat. Thence he set out for the Eastern Archipelago, visiting Java, the Moluccas, &c., and returned to England after an absence of four years. On his arrival he found his old patron dead, and as his hopes of preferment through his means were at an end, he set off to the continent, and on again returning home, married and applied himself to study. When the Civil War broke out he sided with the Parliament; and when Charles was delivered up to his own subjects by the Scots, Herbert was one of those whom he selected to be always near his person. For two years he waited with the most devoted tenderness on the royal prisoner, and at last attended him to the scaffold. In his Threnodia Carolina, published in 1678, Herbert has given a minute history of the life of the king during that period; and Charles II. showed his sense of Herbert's conduct by making him a baronet, "to requite," say the letters patent, "the good and loyal services rendered by him to the king our father during the last years of his life." Herbert died in his native city, March 1, 1682.
By far his most important work is that which he published on his return from the East, under the title of Some Yeares Travels into Africa, and Asia the Great, especially
in the Possessions of the Persian Monarchy, &c., London, 1634. Herbert was a man of learning, and well versed in the histories of the countries he describes; but he overlays his narrative with a useless display of irrelevant knowledge, and with digressions upon countries which he never visited. These faults are peculiarly observable in the later editions of the book, and, it is suspected, may be the work of an editor. Herbert's own share in the work has an air of great truthfulness, and contains much valuable matter not readily accessible elsewhere. Till the appearance of Sir John Chardin's Travels, it was regarded as the best authority on everything connected with Persia. It was translated into Dutch by Jeremiah Van Vliet, Dordrecht, 1658; and from the Dutch into French by Wicquefort, who complains, and with good reason, of the stupid mistakes and mutilations perpetrated by the Dutchman.