9 JULY 1864, Page 11

THE BERKELEYB.—(MODERN PERIOD.)

rinI1011AS LORD BERKELEY is described as a "very wise 1. and provident person," but he seems to have been chiefly remarkable for his magnificence of living, keeping 200 attendants in his family,—knights, esquires, yeomen, grooms, and pages,—besides husbandmen. He was summoned to the field twenty-eight several times. He was succeeded by his son Maurice, who had been called to Parliament during his father's life as Lord Berkeley of Berkeley Castle. He was a man much given to military enterprises, and we have already related his quarrel with the citizens of Bristol. In 1321, along with his father and his sons, he rose against the Des- pencers in the Earls of Lancaster and Hereford's enterprise' and laid waste the estates of the favourites, carrying off from them immense spoils. But early in 1322 the King regained the as- cendant, recalled the Despencers, defeated Lancaster at the battle of Boroughbridge, March 16, and Maurice de Berkeley having neglected to obey his summons to join him against the Barons, the King retook Gloucester, seized all the Berkeley estates and castles, and committed Maurice to Wallingford Castle, where, after an ineffectual attempt to escape, he died a prisoner May 31, 1326. The mayor and citizens of Bristol, who had refused to join in Lancaster's rising, took advantage of this downfall of their old enemy, and seized and committed to the common gaols all who were under the least suspicion of being friends to the Berkeleys, and so ill-treated them that redress was sought and obtained from the King two years afterwards, the prisoners released, and the mayor reprimanded. Lord Maurice left three sons who were lay- men, and two who were clerks. His eldest son, Thomas, succeeded him. From his second, Maurice, descended the Berkeleys of Stoke-Giffard, the Lords Bottetourt, the Viscounts Fitzhardinge in Ireland, the Lords Berkeley of Stratton, and the present Lord Portman ; and from the third, John, the Berkeleys of Shropshire.

Lord Thomas, on the defeat of Lancaster's rising, had been com- mitted to the Tower of London, whence he escaped, but was retaken, and was sent to Berkhampatead Castle, and afterwards to Pevensey Castle. But in September, 1326, Queen Isabel and Prince Edward landing in England, and their party gaining the ascendant, Lord Berkeley was released from Pevensey, October 16, by an order sent by the Queen, and joined her at Oxford. Thence he marched with her to Gloucester, and thence to Berkeley, Hugh le Despencer the younger, who had obtained the castle from the King, flying before them to Bristol, the inhabitants of which place were by this time as discontented with the Despencers as they had been with the Berkeleys. On the triumph of the Queen and Prince which followed, the King falling into their hands, November 16, was forced to resign the Crown on the 20th January, 1327, and before April was taken out of the custody of Henry, Earl of Lancaster, and delivered by express indenture to Thomas, Lord Berkeley, Sir John Maltravers, and Sir Thomas Gournay, by whom he was con- veyed first to Code Castle, thence to Bristol Castle (the journeys being made by night), and thence, on the discovery of a plot of the citizens to deliver the King "on a dark night," April 5, to Berkeley Castle. These removals were by order of Roger Mortimer. Lord Berkeley received the King courteously at his castle, an allowance of 5/. a day being given him for his expenses. For some cause the Lord Berkeley, his chroniclers say on account of his kind treatment of the King, was removed by letter from the charge of his person and the castle ; but whether he was cognizant of the designs against him is less clear. In answer to the charge brought against him in Parliament subsequently of being an accessory to the deed, Lord Berkeley pleaded that he was absent from home at that time, being at Bradley, and so sick as to be in danger of death, and had no memory of anything that passed. The King being murdered on the 22nd September, Lord Berkeley wrote letters on Michaelmas Eve (the 28th) from Bradley to the Queen and Prince at Nottingham, sending them by Gournay, to inform them of what had occurred, and received orders in return through the same messenger to conceal the King's death till All Saints following. Whether really guilty or not of a knowledge of the intended murder, Thomas Lord Berkeley was acquitted by Parliament, and we will give him the benefit of the doubt. In the 1st year of Edward III. he had livery of his estates, and in the same year he and John Maltravers the younger were appointed prin- cipal guardians of the peace in the counties of Gloucester, Wilts, Oxford, Berks, Hants, Somerset, Dorset, and Hereford. He was very active in the wars with Scotland, was at Crecy, the siege of Calais (to which he brought 6 knights, 32 esquires, 30 archers on horseback, and 200 archers on foot, of his own retinue), and at Poictiers. At the latter battle he made so many prisoners that with their ransoms he was able to rebuild the Castle of Bererstone, in

Gloucestershire, the lordship of which, together with that of Over, in Almondsbury, he had purchased in the fifth year of this reign. He also obtained confirmation of all Berkeley and .Berkeley " Hernesse,"—a market there and liberty of coinage,—and also of the manor of Bedminster, and the return of writs in all the hundred of Berkeley. He was also appointed Warden of the Forests South of Trent, and in 1342 Warden of the Marches towards Scotland, where he undertook to stay in person with a banneret, 6 knights, 23 esquires, and 20 archers, for a quarter of a year. He bad many encounters with the Douglas, being generally successful. He had in his domestic retinue no less than 12 knights, who took wages, and sometimes more, each of them having two servants and a page ; and

24 e‘quires, who had each a man and a page. He kept the demesnes of 60 to 80 manors in his hands, and had in all about 300 in family, besides bailiffs, hinds, Sm. He sheared on his Bever.tone estate 5,775 sheep. He was also a great benefactor to the Church. He died October 27, 1361. He had been twice married, his first wife, Margaret, being a daughter of Roger de Mortimer, Earl of March, and widow of the Earl of Oxford (whose dower was 2,000/. and the manor of Langley-Burrel, Wilts). John, his younger son by his second wife, was the ancestor of the Berkeleys of Betesham, in Ilampahire, and of Beverstone, which latter manor (with Tock- ington, Over, Compton, Greenfield, and King's Weston) he held as having been his mother's jointure. Lord Berkeley's eldest son, Maurice (by his first marriage), succeeded as fourth Baron Berkeley by writ. He was knighted at the age of six in Scotland, and the next year (1338) married to Elizabeth, daughter of Hugh le Despencer. Four years afterwards he went a voyage to Spain, and remained abroad for five years. He accompanied the Prince of Wales to Gascony in 1356, and at the battle of Poictiers, September 19, was so severely wounded that he never recovered entirely, though he lived on to June 8, 1368, to the age of thirty-seven. He was succeeded by his eldest son Thomas, fifth Lord Berkeley by writ. He served by sea and land in the wars in France and Spain, and in Scotland. He entertained King Richard II. at Berkeley Castle, in the tenth year of his reign. He was present at Flint Castle when Richard resigned his Crown, and testified to it in the King's presence in the Tower of London. He was afterwards, when in Parliament the King's deposition was pronounced by a Bishop, Abbot, Eml, Baron, and Knight, appointed the representative of the Barons for that solemn act. In the 4th Henry IV. he was made one of the Wardens of the Marches of Wales, with power over the sheriffs of six counties, against Owen Glendower. The next year he was appointed Admiral of the King's Fleet from the mouth of the Thames to the west and south, and sworn in Parliament of the Privy Council. In the same year, being sent to Wales to appease the tumults there, he was made Governor of the Castle of Brecknock, and when Charles VT. of France sent a fleet to assist Glen- dower Lord Berkeley attacked it at Milford Haven, burnt 15 sail, and took 14, on board of which was the Seneschal of France and 8 officers of note. In the 6th and 7th of this reign he was again in the Welsh wars, and acted as engineer at the siege of Lampader-vaur, in Pembrokeshire. He was not only a great soldier, but a patron of learning. John Trevisa, the famous Vicar of Berkeley, celebrated for his learning and eloquence, translated the Old and New Testa- ments into English at the request of this Lord Berkeley. This great baron died July 13, 1417. He married Margaret, daughter and heiress of Warine, second Lord Lisle, by Alice, daughter and heiress of Henry, Lord Tyes, and left by her only a daughter, Elizabeth, married to Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick.

An anomaly in the rules of succession now occurred. In- stead of this Elizabeth succeeding to the barony and estates of Berkeley, for some reason her first cousin, James Berkeley, son of Sir James Berkeley, next brother to the last Lord, succeeded to the castle and estates of Berkeley, and on October 20, 1421, was summoned to Parliament as Baron of Berkeley, and Mr. Court- hope (the editor of "Nicolas' Historic Peerage ") consideis that this writ of summons in fact created a new barony, and that the old one is (according to modern decisions on this point) in abeyance between the heirs-general of the three daughters of the Countess of Warwick, of whom the Sidneys are one. There are instances of the same anomaly in the cases of the baronies of Burghersh and De In Warr. The mother of the new baron was the daughter and heiress of Sir John Blnett, of Ragland. The Earl of Warwick much disquieted him in the possession of his new dignity and property, but he managed to retain his hold of it, and was summoned to Parliament down to the time of his death. There was a lawsuit between the two parties for the estates, which lasted 192 years, and both had also resort to arms, and

Berkeley Castle was besieged and defended many times, Lord Berkeley, as the weaker party, having purchased for 1,000 marks the patronage of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Protector. He strengthened himself also by a great marriage, viz., to Isabel, second daughter and ultimately coheiress of Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England, by Elizabeth, eldest sister and coheiress of Thomas FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, descended from Thomas of Brotherton, eldest son of Edward I. by his second wife, the daughter of Philip le Ilardi, King of France. This lady was so unfortunate during the violent scenes between the rival claimants for the Berkeley estates, as to be seized by Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury (daughter of Elizabeth, Countess of Warwick, and second wife of the Talbot), and imprisoned in Gloucester Castle, where she died in 1452, her husband strangely enough thereupon marrying Joan, the daughter of the Countess of Shrewsbury, but leaving no issue by her. He espoused the Yorkist side in the War of the Roses, and sat in Edward IV.'s first Parlia- ment in 1462. The date of his death is disputed, Collins says Novem- ber, 1463, Nicolas, 1462. Be was succeeded by his eldest son, Wil- liam, who in the thirteenth year of his age was a retainer in the house- hold of the great Cardinal Beaufort, and in 1438 was knighted at Calais. He avenged his mother's imprisonment by the Countess of Shrewsbury in a characteristic manner. The Earl of Warwick (husband of Elizabeth Berkeley) had seized several manors from the Berkeley-s, such as Wotton-under-Edge, Nibley, and others, and kept possession of them. In March, 1470, Thomas Talbot, Viscount Lisle, son of Shakespeare's "young John Talbot," who fell in battle with his father, and grandson of the Countess of Shrewsbury, the rival claimant of the Berkeley property, sent from Wotton a challenge to William Lord Berkeley, in which he desired him to fix a time and place for deciding their title by the sword. Lord Berkeley in his answer,, after taunting Lord Lisle with the newness of that dignity, and declaring that his " lyvelode, as well his manor of Wotton, as his castle of Berkeley, were entailed to him by fine of record in the King's courts, by the advice of all the judges of this land in that day being," appointed the next morning for the time of their encounter, and Nibley Green, near Wotton, for the place. Here they met with their respective forces, about in all 1,000 men, on March 20, and a furious engagement ensued, in which about 150 men were slain, including Lord Lisle, who was shot in the mouth with an arrow by one James IIiatte, of the forest of Dean. Lord Berkeley after his victory hastened to Wotton, where Lady-Lisle miscarried with fright at his approach-- he rifled the house, and carried away some of the furniture, and many deeds and evidences of Lord Lisle's own estate, which still remain in the Castle of Berkeley. Lord Berkeley was high in the favour of Edward IV., who on the 21st April, 1481, created him by patent Viscount Berkeley, and soon after he had a grant of 1,000 marks per annum for life out of the customs of the port of Bristol. On the 28th of June, 1483, two days after Richard In.'s assumption of the Crown, that King created Viscount Berkeley Earl of Nottingham (the old title of the Mowbrays), and he sat as such in Richard's first Parliament. But he afterwards fled to Brittany, to the Earl of Richmond, and on the accession of the latter to the Crown as Henry VII. in 1485 was created Earl Mar- shal of England, with limitation to the heirs male of his body, and a fee of 201. per annum (February 19, 1486). On the 28th Jan- uary, 1489, he was further raised to the dignity of Marquis of Berkeley. Having no children of his own, and quarrelling with his brother Maurice (it is said for contracting large debts on the. strength of the succession to the property), in 1488 he settled and assured the castle and manor of Berkeley to his own use in tail general, with remainder to King. Henry VII. in tail male, re- mainder to his right heirs. He died February 14, 1492, when the Earldom and Marquisate became extinct; but the barony of Berkeley (of 1421) should have devolved on his brother Maurice. But having lost his inheritance, which vested in the Crown, he. was never summoned to Parliament. In 1500, however, he and Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey (as representatives of the two coheiresses of Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk), made partition of that property, among which was a considerable estate in Ireland, afterwards lost to the family by the Statute of Absentees in the reign of Henry VIII. He died in 1506, and was succeeded by his son Maurice, who was made a Knight of the Bath at the coro- nation of Henry VIII.; in 1512 Knight of the Body to that King; in 1614 attended the Princess Mary when she was married to the King of France ; was sheriff of Gloucestershire for two successive years, Lieutenant of the Castle of Calais, and captain of fifty men- at-arms. In 1522 he was summoned to Parliament, but sat as a junior baron according to this new creation. In the ensuing year he accompanied the Duke of Suffolk in his expedition to assist the Emperor Maximilian. He died at Calais without issue September 12, 1523, and was succeeded in the Mowbray property by his brother Thomas, who had in 1513 been knighted by the Earl of Surrey for his gallant behaviour at Flodden Field. In the 22nd Henry VIII. he signed the letter of the Lords to the Pope respect- ing the divorce of Catherine of Arragon, and in the 24th year of the same reign he was made Constable of Berkeley Castle. Three years before,-3rd November, 1529,-he had been summoned to Parliament, and took precedence according to the older barony of Berkeley,-a proof in itself that the barony was not necessarily tied up with the tenure of the Castle of Berkeley, as was after- wards asserted. He died 28th January, 1533, and was succeeded in the Mowbray property by his son Thomas, who was summoned to Parliament January 5, 1534, and sat according to the prece- dence of the older barony, but died September 19 in the same year, and was succeeded in the Mowbray estates by a posthumous son, Henry, who, on the death of King Edward VI., the last male heir of Henry VII., recovered the Berkeley family estates, with the castle. The inquisition of these estates taken on the death of Edward gives them as follows :-The castle and manor of Berke- ley, the manors of Hane, Apulridge, Slymbridge, Hurst, Cowley, Alldngton, Came, Hynton, Wotton-under-Edge, with the a.dvow- son thereof, Symondshall, and Erdingham, in Gloucestershire ; the manors of Portbury and Portshead in Somersetshire ; one- fourth of the manor of Tiborne alias Marybone [Tyburnia and Marylebone],-in Middlesex, and the manor of Shington, in Warwickshire. He was summoned to Parliament November 5, 1558, but appears also to have sat before in the 4th and 5th of that reign. He was still, however, haunted by the old lawsuit, which was revived in Queen Elizabeth's reign by the Dudleys, Earls of Warwick and Leicester, who represented the descendants of Tal- bot, Lord Lisle, and maintained a long and chargeable suit against Lord Berkeley, which was at last ended in the 7th of James I. by a reference. He is said to have outbid Queen Elizabeth for a lute. He was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire in the 1st James I., and died November 26, 1613, aged seventy-nine. His eldest son, Sir Thomas, died in his father's lifetime, November 22, 1611, leaving a son George, who succeeded his grandfather as twelfth Baron by writ of summons (omitting the disinherited Maurice). He was made a Knight of the Bath, 1616, travelled much abroad, and is recorded to have been distinguished for his liberality and affability to his inferiors. He espoused the cause of the Parliament in the Civil War, and his castle was occupied and garrisoned by the Cavaliers against him till retaken by Cromwell in the campaign after the battle of Na.seby. He died August 10, 1658, and was succeeded by his son George, thirteenth Lord Berkeley by summons, raised by Charles II. to the titles of Viscount Dursley and Earl of Berkeley on llth September, 1679, having in 1678 been sworn of the Privy Council. He was a man of strict virtue and religious character, and wrote a tract called "Historical Applications and Occasional Meditations upon Several Subjects" (1670), on which Waller ivrote some lines.

"Bold is the man that dares engage

For piety in such an age," &e.

King James IL made him Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, and July 21, 1685, one of the Privy Council. But when the King withdrew, December 10, 1689, he was one of the Lordswho at Guild- hall subscribed a declaration that they would assist the Prince of Orange. At the accession of William and Mary he was appointed one of the Privy Council and Lord-Lieutenant of Surrey. He died October 14, 1698, aged seventy-one. He married Elizabeth, one of the coheiresses of John Mas.singberd, Esq., of Lincolnshire, and his eldest son by her, Charles, succeeded as second Earl of Berkeley. He had been made a Knight of the Bath in 1661, in 1679 and 1681 sat for the city of Gloucester in Parliament, and on the accession of William and Mary was called up to the House of Peers (July 11, 1689), as Baron Berkeley of Berkeley. In the same year he went as Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the States of Holland, and remained till 1695, when he was made one of the Privy Council. He was made Lord-Lieutenant of the county of Gloucester, and in 1699 one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. He was sworn of Queen Anne's Privy Council on June 7, 1702, appointed Constable of the Castle of Briavd in the forest of Dean, and keeper of the forest, and Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire and Surrey. He died September 24, 1710. His eldest son, Charles, died of small-pox in May, 1699, and he was succeeded as third Earl Berkeley by his second son, James. (His third, Henry, a colonel in the army, represented Gloucestershire in Parliament.) His second daughter, Elizabeth, married Sir John Germaine, of Drayton, Northamptonshire, who left her his estates, which she bequeathed to the too celebrated Lord George Sackville, who took therefrom the name of Germaine. James, third Earl, was a sailor of distinction. He sat in William's last Parliament for the city of Gloucester, and was called up to the House of Peers March 7, 1704, as Baron Dursley. He commanded the Boyne (80 guns) in Sir George Rooke's engagement with the French off Malaga, August 13, 1704, and served under Sir Cloudealey Shovel at the siege of Toulon, and was nearly lost along with him on a ridge of rocks on his return. He rose to be an admiral, and continued to distinguish himself in sea engagements till his accession to the Eaddom. He was made Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire and Custos Rotulorum of the city and county of Bristol, Warden of the Forest of Dean, and High Steward of Gloucester. On the accession of George I. he was appointed one of the Lords of the Bedchamber, on April 16, 1717, sworn of the Privy Council, and March 18, 1718, made First Commissioner of the Admiralty, in which he continued all the rest of the reign of George I. He was also Vice-Admiral of Great Britain and Lieutenant of the Admiralty thereof, and Lieutenant of the Navies and Seas of the kingdom of Great Britain, he was five times a Lord Justice, made a Knight of the Garter in 1718, in Sep- tember, 1727, he was made Lord-Lieutenant of Lincolnshire, on November 10, of Gloucestershire, and Custos Rotulorum of the cities and counties of Bristol and Gloucester, and of Surrey, Keeper of the Forest of Dean, Constable of St. Briaval's, and Vice- Admiral of England as before. He died in August, 1736. He was succeeded by his son, Augustus, fourth Earl of Berkeley, who went into the army, was in 1737 made Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire; in 1739 one of the Knights of the Thistle, and in 1745 colonel of one of the regiments sent against the rebels. He also effectually secured his part of the country against the Jacobites, when they were hesitating as to a rising to join the Chevalier. He it is who is said to have offered to George II. to kidnap his obnoxious son, Frederick, and dispose of him in some way in America. He died January 9, 1755, and was succeeded by his son Frederick Augustus, fifth Earl of Berke- ley. He was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, Custos Rotulorum of Bristol and Gloucester ; Warden of the Forest of Dean, Constable of St. Briaval's, High Steward of Gloucester, and colonel of the militia of Gloucestershire and of Bristol and Gloucester. He died August 8, 1810. He formed an intimacy with Mary, daughter of William Cole, and it was after- wards maintained that he married her at Berkeley on March 30, 1785, and he was subsequently certainly married to her at Lambeth, May 16, 1796. On his death a question arose whether the children born between those dates were legitimate or not, and the Howe of Lords, on reference to a Committee of Privileges, came to a vote, July 1, 1811, disallowing the former marriage. The four eldest sons therefore born before the Lambeth marriage were made illegitimate, and the title of Earl of Berkeley adjudged to the fifth son, Thomas Morton Fitzhardinge, born October 19, 1796. In 1828 the eldest son, William Fitzhardinge, then Colonel Berkeley, took steps to establish the right of the holder of the castle of Berkeley (left him by his father) to sit as a Baron by tenure. The point, however, was not then determined, Colonel Berkeley being created in 1831 Baron Segrave, and in 1841 Earl Fitzhardinge. Hie brother Thomas has never, how- ever, assumed the title of Earl of Berkeley, generously deeming that the title would be borne at the expense of a slur upon his mother's fame. Earl Fitzhardinge died in October, 1857, leaving the castle, &c., to his next brother, Maurice Frederick Fitz- hardinge, an admiral in the navy, and who had served many years in Parliament for the city of Gloucester, and was one of the Lords of the Admiralty in the Whig Governments. He revived the claim to the barony, but it was decided against him, and he was subsequently, August 5, 1861, created Baron Fitzhardinge. The family have great influence in Gloucestershire, which they have always exerted in the Whig and Liberal interest. They command one Parliamentary seat for the county of Gloucester, one for the city of Gloucester, and generally one for Cheltenham ; and Francis Henry Fitzhardinge Berkeley, the youngest of the "illegiti- mate" brothers, has sat for twenty-seven years for the city of Bris. tol, and is well known for his genial and consistent advocacy of the ballot.

The fate of the family is a strange one ; but opinion and the Crown combine to override the decision of the House of Lords, and the owners of the castle are considered the legitimate as well as the lineal representatives of the great family whose name they bear.