Courtier, scholar, and man of the sword : Lord Herbert of Cherbury and his world
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Bibliographic Information
Courtier, scholar, and man of the sword : Lord Herbert of Cherbury and his world
Oxford University Press, 2021
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [347]-366) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Lord Herbert of Cherbury was a flamboyant Stuart courtier, soldier, and diplomat who acquired a reputation for duelling and extravagance but also numbered among the leading intellectuals of his generation. He travelled widely in Britain and Europe, enjoyed the patronage of princely rulers and their consorts, acquired celebrity as the embodiment of chivalric values, and defended European Protestantism on the battlefield and in diplomatic exchanges. As a scholar and author of De veritate and The Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth, he commanded respect in the European Republic of Letters and accumulated a much-admired library. As a courtier, he penned poetry and exchanged verses with John Donne and Ben Jonson, compiled a famous lute-book, wrote a widely-read autobiography, commissioned exquisite portraits by leading court artists, and built an impressive country house. Herbert was an enigmatic Janus figure who cherished the masculine values and martial lifestyle of his ancestors but embraced the Renaissance scholarship and civility of the early modern court and anticipated the intellectual and theological liberalism of the Enlightenment. His life and writings provide a unique window into the aristocratic world and cultural mindset of the early seventeenth century and the outbreak and impact of the Thirty Years War and British Civil Wars. This volume examines his career, life-style, political allegiances, religious beliefs, and scholarship within their British and European contexts, challenges the reputation he has acquired as a dilettante scholar, boastful auto-biographer, royalist turncoat and early deist, and offers a new assessment of his life and achievement.
Table of Contents
Introduction
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
1: A Promising Youth
2: Chafing at the Bit
COURTLY ADVENTURES
3: French Leave
4: Courtier and Swordsman
5: Citizen of the World
DIPLOMATIC INTERVENTIONS
6: Changing Times
7: My Lord, the Ambassador
8: The Fickleness of Princes
INTELLECTUAL OCCUPATIONS
9: Intellectual Ambitions and Interests
10: Philosopher and Theologian
11: Royal Historian
12: Musician and Poet
COURT AND COUNTRY
13: Noble Preoccupations
14: 'Treacherous Herbert' or Man of Honour?
Epilogue
by "Nielsen BookData"
