William was a bookish man, once tutored by the poet Samuel Daniel, and preferred to keep to his study with heavy pipe-smoking to keep his "migraines" at bay. Nevertheless, he was a conspicuous figure in the society of his time and at the court of King James I. Several times he found himself opposed to the schemes of the Duke of Buckingham and was keenly interested in the colonization of the Americas. He was Lord Chamberlain of the Royal Household from 1615 to 1625 and Lord Steward from 1626 to 1630. He was Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1624 when Pembroke College was named in his honour.
Marriage
On 4 November 1604 he married Mary Talbot, a daughter of Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury. Earlier in his youth his father negotiated a marriage between William and Bridget de Vere, a granddaughter of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley. A marriage settlement was drawn up offering £3,000 and an annuity to begin at Burghley's death, which was not acceptable to the young William who wanted the annuity to commence immediately and thus the negotiations ended. By Mary Talbot he had two sons, neither of whom survived infancy:
At the age of twenty he had an affair with Mary Fitton, whom he impregnated. Although he admitted paternity he refused to marry her and was sent to the Fleet Prison where he wrote verse. In 1601 Mary gave birth to a boy who died immediately. He petitioned Sir Robert Cecil and was eventually released, though he and Mary were both barred from court.
Herbert had another affair with his first cousin Lady Mary Wroth, a daughter of his uncle Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester. The relationship produced at least two illegitimate children, a boy named William and a girl named Catherine. His cousin Sir Thomas Herbert records William paternity of the two children in his Herbertorum Prosapia a seventeenth-century genealogy of the Herbert family.
Herbert has been seen as the "Fair Youth" in William Shakespeare's sonnets, whom the poet urges to marry. Some years Shakespeare's junior, he was a patron of the playwright and his initials match with the dedication of the Sonnets to one "Mr. W.H.", "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets." The identification was first proposed by James Boaden in his 1837 tract On the Sonnets of Shakespeare. E. K. Chambers, who had previously considered Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton to be the Fair Youth, changed his mind when he encountered evidence in letters that around 1595 young Herbert had been urged to wed Elizabeth Carey, granddaughter of Henry Carey, the Lord Chamberlain who ran Shakespeare's company. But he refused to marry her. In her Arden Shakespeare edition of the Sonnets, Katherine Duncan-Jones argues that Herbert is the likelier candidate. The First Folio of Shakespeare's plays was dedicated to "incomparable pair of brethren" William Herbert and his brother Philip Herbert. Herbert was also an important patron of the arts and a member of the Whitehall group.
A life-size bronze standing statue of William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke was sculpted by Hubert Le Sueur and stood at the family seat of Wilton House in Wiltshire. In 1723 Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke donated the statue to the Bodleian library in Oxford University in recognition of his office as Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1617 until his death, for having promoted the founding of Pembroke College, Oxford and for having donated many manuscripts to the Bodleian Library in 1629. The statue was firstly housed in the Bodleian Picture Gallery on the third floor, but in 1950 it was moved outdoors to its present location in front of the main entrance to the Old Bodleian Library, looking east across the Schools Quadrangle. The statue is grade II listed. The square stone plinth is inscribed on two sides as follows in Latin: Gulielmus Pembrochiae Comes regnantibus Jacobo et Carolo Primis hospitii regii camerarius et senescallus Academiae Oxoniensis Cancellarius munificentissimus. On the opposite side: Hanc patrui sui magni effigiem ad formam quam tinxit Petrus Paulus Rubens aere fuso expressam Academiae Oxoniensi d d Thomas Pembrochiae et Montgom Comes honorum et virtutum haeres A.D. MDCCXXIII
