BERKELEY, Charles (1662-82)

Charles Berkeley’s father, Baron Berkeley of Stratton, looked to his young sons to further his ambitions. He had already acquired some notoriety in the 1660s for building Berkeley House, a splendid and extravagant townhouse on the north side of the developing region of Piccadilly, as well as for purchasing Twickenham Park in that royal manor in Middlesex. Wheatley, i. 162-3; Lysons, iii. 565-6. His eldest son and heir Charles temporarily played a role in his father’s further plans. In 1672 Berkeley entered into an agreement whereby, in exchange for a payment of £5,000, Mary Davies, the young heiress of the Ebury estate abutting onto Berkeley’s land in the west of the capital, was to marry Charles as soon as she reached her 12th birthday in 1677. The deal ultimately fell through as Berkeley was unable to settle the £3,000 of land on Mary stipulated in the agreement; she later went on to marry Sir Thomas Grosvenor^‡, and her inheritance became known as the Grosvenor Estate, or Mayfair. Survey of London, xxxix. 4; C.T. Gatty, Mary Davis and Ebury Manor, 200-2.

On his father’s death in August 1678, Charles was still underage but ‘taking an especial delight in the art of navigation, and for his better improvement therein’ was already serving as a volunteer by royal order in the navy. J.D. Davies, Gentlemen and Tarpaulins, 16, 30; Add. 38141, f. 38. By the time of his premature death from smallpox on 6 Mar. 1682 the 2nd Baron Berkeley of Stratton had still not reached his majority but had been captain of the man-of-war The Tiger since July 1681 and was then cruising in the Mediterranean. Syrrett, 31; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 117, 180. His body lay in state at his mansion of Berkeley House and was conveyed for burial to the parish church of his father’s other principal estate at Twickenham, ‘two troops of his Majesty’s horse marching in front of the proceedings through Westminster to Knightsbridge’. Add. 38141, f. 38. He died unmarried and intestate, and his estate was put under the administration of his mother while the title passed to his younger brother John, who was also starting his own career at sea.