g Robert appears to have attended school in Westminster until his
fifteenth year, when he was apprenticed to Sir William, who had learned
the gentle art of goldsmith from his nephew's father. Though Robert's
indentures bound him for ten years, Sir William is supposed to have
offered no remonstrance when he was asked, long before that term
expired, to cancel the engagement and allow Robert to enter Cambridge,
which he did as fellow-commoner at St. John's College. At the end of two
years he transferred himself to Trinity Hall, with a view to economy and
the pursuit of the law--the two frequently go together. He received his
degree of B. A. in 1617, and his M. A. in 1620, having relinquished the
law for the arts.

During this time he was assumed to be in receipt of a quarterly
allowance of ten pounds--a not illiberal provision, the pound being then
five times its present value; but as the payments were eccentric, the
master of arts was in recurrent distress. If this money came from his
own share of his father's estate, as seems likely, Herrick had cause for
complaint; if otherwise, the pith is taken out of his grievance.

The Iliad of his financial woes at this juncture is told in a few
chance-preserved letters written to his "most careful uncle," as he
calls that evidently thrifty person. In one of these monotonous and
dreary epistles, which are signed "R. Hearick," the writer says: "The
essence of my writing is (as heretofore) to entreat you to paye for
my use to Mr. Arthour Johnson, bookseller, in Paule's Churchyarde, the
ordinarie sume of tenn pounds, and that with as much sceleritie as you
maye." He also indulges in the natural wish that his college bills
"had leaden wings and tortice feet." This was in 1617. The young man's
patrimony, whatever it may have been, had dwindled, and he confesses to
"many a throe and pinches of the purse." For the moment, at least, his
prospects were not flattering.

Robert Herrick's means of livelihood, when in 1620 he quitted the
university and went up to London, are conjectural. It is clear that he
was not without some resources, since he did not starve to death on his
wits before he discovered a patron in the Earl of Pembroke. In the court
circle Herrick also unearthed humbler, but perhaps not less useful,
allies in the persons of Edward Norgate, clerk of the signet, and Master
John Crofts, cup-bearer to the king. Through the two New Year anthems,
honored by the music of Henry Lawes