university (1540) and the refoundation of Wolsey’s unfin-
ished Cardinal College at Oxford as Christ Church
(1546). In the early years of his reign he encouraged lav-
ish court spectacles, presenting himself as the ideal Re-
naissance prince. He personally engaged in the religious
controversies of the day with his Assertio septem sacra-
mentorum contra M. Luther (1521) and is credited with
writing a number of songs and ballads. HOLBEIN THE
YOUNGERworked for him in the 1530s. Using assets ac-
quired by the seizure of Church property, particularly after
Wolsey’s fall, Henry also embarked on major building pro-
jects, most notably at HAMPTON COURT PALACE, York Place
(Whitehall), and Nonsuch, the last directly influence by
FONTAINEBLEAU.
Further reading: James McConica, English Humanists
and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI
(Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1965; repr. 1968); David
Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII: A European Court in England
(London: Collins & Brown and National Maritime Mu-
seum, Greenwich, 1991); Alison Weir, Henry VIII: The
King and His Court (New York: Ballantine, 2001).
Henry of Glarus See GLAREANUS, HENRICUS
Henry the Navigator (1394–1460) Prince of Portugal
The younger son of John I of Portugal, he was renowned
for fostering science and exploration. His home at Sagres
was a center of information about navigation, maps, new
lands, and improved shipbuilding techniques. Henry him-
self did not travel, but he masterminded the exploration of
the Atlantic coast of Africa, and his expeditions reached
the Senegal coast, Madeira, and the Azores. He alerted
Portugal to the opportunities to be won by exploration
and after his death the Portuguese continued his work by
opening the route to India via the Cape of Good Hope and
by discoveries in the Americas.
herbals Collections of descriptions of plants and their
medicinal uses. Many derive from Dioscorides’ De materia
medica, compiled in the first century CE, of which the old-
est surviving manuscript, the Codex Vindobonensis, was
made in 512 in Byzantium; the family of herbals based on
it, comprising manuscript or printed translations and
adaptations, flourished until the 17th century. Latin ver-
sions often combine Dioscorides’ text with another by
pseudo-Apuleius (Apuleius Platonicus), collected from
Greek sources about 400 CEand among the first to be
printed, in Rome in the 1480s. The Mainz printer, Peter
Schöffer, produced the Latin Herbarius (1484) and its
larger German companion (1485), one of the first scien-
tific books in the vernacular. The Latin one described
about 150 plants, the German nearly 400. Both were illus-
trated, the German pictures drawn in part from nature,
though the third Mainz herbal, Hortus sanitatis (1491) re-
verted to more primitive illustrations. The great herbals of
BRUNFELS, FUCHS, and MATTIOLI, in Latin and the vernacu-
lar, first appeared from 1530 to 1544, still leaning on
Dioscorides but also describing and illustrating new
plants without medicinal uses. William TURNER, Rembert
DODOENS, and Carolus CLUSIUS continued to enlarge
botanical knowledge, though the influence of GERARD’s
Herball probably lasted longer than most. The doctrine of
SIGNATURES, based on the supposed resemblance of partic-
ular plants to the parts of the body they affected, was ex-
plained most fully in Giambattista DELLA PORTA’s
Phytognomonica (1588). As BOTANYbecame an indepen-
dent study, herbals were once more restricted to medicinal
plants.
Further reading: Wilfrid Blunt and Sandra Raphael,
The Illustrated Herbal (London: Frances Lincoln, rev. ed.
1994).Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke (1561–1621)
Poet and literary patron
The daughter of Sir Henry and Mary Sidney, she was born
at Ticknell, Worcestershire; her much-loved elder brother
was Sir Philip SIDNEY. Recommended to court by her uncle
Robert Dudley, Earl of LEICESTER, she became the third
wife of Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke in 1577. When
Philip fell out of favor at court in 1580 he retired to the
Pembrokes’ house, Wilton in Wiltshire, where he collabo-
rated with Mary on a metrical translation of the Psalms
and worked on his Arcadia, which he wrote for her and of
which Mary brought out two revised editions (1593,
1598) after his death. Her sorrow at his death in 1586 is
recorded in “The Dolefull Lay of Clorinda,” published by
Edmund SPENSERwith his own elegy “Astrophel” (1595).
She also edited Sidney’s poems, bringing out an authorized
edition in 1598 to supersede earlier unauthorized ones. In
1590 she made two translations from French: a blank
verse version of Robert GARNIER’s Anthonie (published
1592), and A Discourse of Life and Death from Plessis du
Mornay (1593, 1600).
She was a major patron of writers, first of all of
Philip’s literary protégés Spenser and Abraham Fraunce.
She appointed Samuel DANIELtutor to her son William at
Wilton in the 1590s, where he wrote some of his earliest
work; he dedicated a number of his publications to her.
Many other writers (Nicholas Breton, Gabriel Harvey, Ben
Jonson among them) recorded their admiration of her in
dedications or poems; Thomas NASHEreferried to her as “a
second Minerva.” She died in London and was buried in
Salisbury cathedral. Her famous epitaph is attributed to
William Browne: “Underneath this sable Herse / Lyes the
subject of all verse: / Sydney’s sister, Pembroke’s Mother...”
Further reading: Margaret P. Hannay, Philip’s Phoenix:
Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford
University Press, 1990); Kim Walker, Women Writers of the
English Renaissance (New York: Twayne, 1996).22336 6 HHeennrryy ooff GGllaarruuss