27 Facts About George Herbert

George Herbert was an English poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England.

George Herbert received a good education that led to his admission to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1609.

George Herbert went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the University's Public Orator and attracted the attention of King James I George Herbert sat in the Parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625.

George Herbert gave up his secular ambitions in his mid-thirties and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of the rural parish of Fugglestone St Peter, just outside Salisbury.

George Herbert was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill and providing food and clothing for those in need.

George Herbert was never a healthy man and died of consumption at age 39.

The Herbert family was wealthy and powerful in both national and local government, and George was descended from the same stock as the Earls of Pembroke.

George Herbert's father was a member of parliament, a justice of the peace, and later served for several years as custos rotulorum of Montgomeryshire.

George Herbert's mother was a patron and friend of clergyman and poet John Donne and other poets, writers and artists.

George Herbert entered Westminster School at or around the age of 12 as a day pupil, although later he became a residential scholar.

George Herbert was admitted on a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1609, and graduated first with a Bachelor's and then with a Master's degree in 1616 at the age of 23.

Subsequently, George Herbert was elected a major fellow of his college and then appointed Reader in Rhetoric.

In 1624, supported by his kinsman the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, George Herbert became a member of parliament, representing Montgomery.

In short, George Herbert made a shift in his path away from the political future he had been pursuing, and turned more fully toward a future in the church.

George Herbert was presented with the prebend of Leighton Bromswold in the Diocese of Lincoln in 1626, whilst he was still a don at Trinity College, Cambridge, but not yet ordained.

George Herbert was not present at his institution as prebend, and it is recorded that Peter Walker, his clerk, stood in as his proxy.

George Herbert raised money to restore the neglected church building at Leighton.

In 1628 or 1629, George Herbert lodged at Dauntsey House in the north of Wiltshire, the home of his stepfather's brother Henry Danvers and Henry's elderly widowed mother Elizabeth.

In 1629, George Herbert decided to enter the priesthood and the next year was appointed rector of the rural parish of Fugglestone St Peter with Bemerton, near Salisbury in Wiltshire, about 75 miles south-west of London.

George Herbert was responsible for two small churches: the 13th-century parish church of St Peter at Fugglestone, near Wilton, and the 14th-century chapel of St Andrew at Bemerton, closer to Salisbury at the other end of the parish.

George Herbert wrote a guide to rural ministry entitled A Priest to the Temple or, The County Parson His Character and Rule of Holy Life, which he himself described as "a Mark to aim at", and which has remained influential to this day.

Twice a week George Herbert made the short journey into Salisbury to attend services at the cathedral, and afterwards would make music with the cathedral musicians.

All of George Herbert's surviving English poems are on religious themes and are characterised by directness of expression enlivened by original but apt conceits in which, in the Metaphysical manner, the likeness is of function rather than visual.

The first edition was prefixed with unsigned preface by Oley, which was used as one of the sources for Izaak Walton's biography of George Herbert, first published in 1670.

George Herbert's mother Magdalen Herbert was a friend of the composers William Byrd and John Bull, and encouraged her children's musical education; his brother Edward Herbert of Cherbury was a skilled lutenist and composer.

George Herbert played the lute and viol, and "sett his own lyricks or sacred poems".

The earliest portrait of George Herbert was engraved long after his death by Robert White for Walton's biography of the poet in 1674.