George Herbert’s mother was a good and beautiful woman, and she loved her children so well that the poet said afterwards she had been twice a mother to him.

At twelve he was sent to Westminster school where we are told “the beauties of his pretty behaviour shined” so that he seemed “to become the care of Heaven and of a particular good angel to guard and guide him."*

Izaak Walton.

At fifteen he went to Trinity College, Cambridge.  And now, although separated from his “dear and careful Mother"* he did not forget her or all that she had taught him.  Already he was a poet.  We find him sending verses as a New Year gift to his mother and writing to her that “my poor abilities in poetry shall be all and ever consecrated to God’s glory.”

The same.

As the years went on Herbert worked hard and became a gently good, as well as a learned man, and in time he was given the post of Public Orator at the University.  This post brought him into touch with the court and with the King.  Of this George Herbert was glad, for although he was a good and saintly man, he longed to be a courtier.  Often now he went to court hoping for some great post.  But James I died in 1625 and with him died George Herbert’s hope of rising to be great in the world.

For a time, then, he left court and went into the country, and there he passed through a great struggle with himself.  The question he had to settle was “whether he should return to the painted pleasure of a court life” or become a priest.

In the end he decided to become a priest, and when a friend tried to dissuade him from the calling as one too much below his birth, he answered:  “It hath been judged formerly, that the domestic servants of the King of Heaven should be one of the noblest families on earth.  And though the iniquity of late times have made clergymen meanly valued, and the sacred name of priest contemptible, yet I will labor to make it honorable. . . .  And I will labor to be like my Saviour, by making humility lovely in the eyes of all men, and by following the merciful and meek example of my dear Jesus.”

But before Herbert was fully ordained a great change came into his life.  The Church of England was now Protestant and priests were allowed to marry, and George Herbert married.  The story of how he met his wife is pretty.

Herbert was such a cheerful and good man that he had many friends.  It was said, indeed, that he had no enemy.  Among his many friends was one named Danvers, who loved him so much that he said nothing would make him so happy as that George should marry one of his nine daughters.  But specially he wished him to marry his daughter Jane, for he loved her best, and would think of no more happy fate for her than to be the wife of such a man as George Herbert.  He talked of George so much to Jane that she loved him without having seen him.  George too heard of Jane and wished to meet her.  And at last after a long time they met.  Each had heard so much about the other that they seemed to know one another already, and like the prince and princess in a fairy tale, they loved at once, and three days later they were married.