Herbert, William (1718 -1795)

William Herbert, the biblographer, was apprenticed to a hosier in London. On the expiration of his articles, he took up the Freedom of the City and opened a shop in Leadenhall Street, but gave it up to learn the art of painting on glass. About 1748, he went to sea as a purser on one of the East India Company's ships and on his return set up as a hydrographer, printseller and bookseller. Eventually, Herbert sold his business for a thousand guineas and retired to Cheshunt in Hertfordshire where he built a library on to his house and revised Joseph Ames's Typographical antiquities which he published in three volumes between 1785 and 1790. His library was catalogued for sale by a nephew Isaac Herbert in 1795 and 1796, some of the early English books being sold at auction in London by Leigh & Sotheby on the 10 March 1796 and his collection of manuscripts on the 21 November 1798 by Arrowsmith and Bowley of Bow Street, Covent Garden. The crest is that of the family of Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and on a bookplate he used the family arms as well, possibly without authority to do so.