William Herbert, son of Henry Herbert and his third wife, the celebrated Mary Sidney, had for his tutor as a boy the poet Samuel Daniel; entered at Oxford in 1593, where he remained for two years; received permission in April 1597, when he was seventeen years old, to live in London, but, as we gather from letters of the period, does not seem to have come up to town until the spring of 1598. In August 1597, negotiations were conducted by letter between his parents and Lord Burghley with a view to his marriage with Burghley's grand-daughter Bridget Vere, a daughter of the Earl of Oxford. It is true that she was only thirteen, but William Herbert was quite prepared to enter upon the engagement. He was to travel abroad before the marriage. Although his mother, the Countess of Pembroke, perhaps divining her son's too in flammable nature, and therefore wanting to see him married betimes, was much in favour of this project, and although the Earl of Oxford was pleased with the young man and praised his "many good partes," difficulties arose of which we have no record, and the plan came to nothing. In London, young Herbert lived at Baynard's Castle, close to the Blackfriars Theatre, and may thus have been brought in contact with the players. It is more probable, however, that so brilliant a woman as "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," should have aroused his interest in Shakespeare; and in that case the poet, in all probability, made the acquaintance of this distinguished and discerning patroness of art and artists as early as 1598. Herbert's father, who died soon afterwards, was already an invalid. It appears that in August 1599 Herbert "followed the camp" at the annual musters, attending her Majesty with two hundred horse, and "swaggering it among the men of war."