BERKELEY, William (c. 1664-1741)

The youngest of the three sons of John Berkeley, Baron Berkeley of Stratton, and born with apparently little chance of inheriting the title, William Berkeley’s early life is largely unknown. Unlike his two elder brothers, in turn the 2nd and 3rd Barons Berkeley of Stratton, he did not choose a naval career and instead studied law at the Inner Temple, where he was called to the bar in 1695. Calendar of the Inner Temple Records, ed. Inderwick, iii. 312. He then devoted his attention to Irish affairs through his connections with the Temples, a family that had provided Ireland with administrators since Sir William Temple^‡ first emigrated there in 1597 and had subsequently became provost of Trinity College. His grandson Sir John Temple, Irish solicitor general from 1660 to 1689, speaker of the House of Commons there from 1661 to 1667 and attorney general from 1691 to 1695, cemented the Berkeleys’ relations with the Temples and with Ireland with a double marriage. In March 1692 Sir John’s elder daughter Jane Martha, a maid of honour to the queen, married the naval commander John Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley of Stratton, while only a few years later, in early 1696, his youngest daughter Frances married the Baron’s younger brother William. In late April 1696, undoubtedly through the influence of his father-in-law, Berkeley was appointed master of the rolls in Ireland, in succession to Sir John Temple’s older brother, the diplomat and statesman Sir William Temple^‡. CSP Dom. 1696, pp. 150, 219. William Berkeley succeeded to the peerage less than a year later, at the unexpected death of his older brother.

The new Baron Berkeley of Stratton first sat in the House on 9 Apr. 1697, perhaps delayed from sitting earlier by his journey from Ireland; he sat for only a further three sittings before that session was prorogued. He was more attentive when Parliament met again in the session 1697-8, when he attended 80 per cent of the meetings. It is difficult to distinguish many of his activities during this session as there was another Baron Berkeley present in the House throughout, Charles Berkeley, Baron Berkeley of Berkeley (better known as Lord Dursley), who had been summoned to the House in July 1689 in a junior barony of his father George Berkeley, earl of Berkeley. It was most likely Berkeley of Berkeley, a more established figure in the House at this time, who was appointed manager on 13 Jan. 1698 for a conference on amendments to the bill to continue the imprisonment of those implicated in the assassination plot and who entered two protests against decisions of 16 and 17 Mar. 1698 to grant relief to the appellants in the case between James Bertie^‡ and Lucius Henry Carey, 6th Viscount Falkland [S].

A protest of 1 July 1698 against the second reading of the bill to settle the East India trade was signed by both Berkeley of Berkeley (who wrote himself as such) and, most likely, his father the earl, making his last impact on the session before leaving the House for good for that session. Admittedly the earl is not marked as present on that day, but he was probably around the House, for the proxy registers make it clear that on that date George, earl of Berkeley registered his proxy with his distant kinsman Berkeley of Stratton before leaving Westminster. The clerk of the House did generally distinguish between Berkeley of Berkeley and Berkeley of Stratton when drawing up committee appointments, and it is clear that Berkeley of Stratton was appointed to 32 select committees during this session, including ones considering the methods to receive appeals from the court of chancery in Ireland (7 Jan. 1698), to restrain the expense of legal suits (17 Jan.), and to consider the practice of exchequer bills (23 Mar.), all of which would have had relevance to his legal practice, particularly in Ireland.

Identification of Berkeley of Stratton’s activities in the House becomes much easier from 14 Oct. 1698, when Berkeley of Berkeley succeeded to his father’s title as 2nd earl of Berkeley, leaving Berkeley of Stratton the only Baron Berkeley in the House (until 1705). He also helpfully took to signing his protests and other interventions as ‘Berkeley of Stratton’. Although the new Parliament first convened on 24 Aug. 1698, Berkeley of Stratton did not appear in the House until 29 November. He came to 81 per cent of the sittings of the first session, in 1698-9, of the new Parliament, during which he was nominated to 20 select committees. He was nominated to two committees set up to consider the petition of the London Society of the Ulster Plantation against William King, bishop of Derry [I], (on 11 Feb. and 24 Mar. 1699), an issue that would have been pertinent to his legal work in Ireland, and on 8 Feb. 1699 he voted against the motion to assist the king in retaining his Dutch Guards and clearly signed his dissent as ‘Berkeley S.’ when that motion was passed. In the 1699-1700 session, of which he attended 70 per cent of the sittings but was named to only four committees, he supported the bill to retain the ‘old’ East India Company as a corporation in a vote of 23 Feb. 1700.

In the early summer of 1700 Berkeley’s status was given a boost by the marriage of his widowed sister-in-law, Jane Martha, dowager Baroness Berkeley of Stratton, to Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland, one of the most powerful and richest men in the kingdom. She was a prominent courtier from this time, even after Portland’s death in 1709, and was more than willing to assist the interests and ambitions of her brother-in-law.

In the Parliament of early 1701 Berkeley was present for 82 per cent of the sittings and was named to 14 committees. Among these were three large committees to consider precedents and methods for the impeachments of the Junto lords and in the week of 17-23 June he voted for the acquittal of both John Somers, Baron Somers and Edward Russell, earl of Orford. In the following Parliament of early 1702, 71 per cent of whose meetings he attended, he was named to 16 committees, signed the address of 1 Jan. 1702 against Louis XIV’s recognition of the Pretender as king of England and on 8 Mar. was named a manager to the conference on the death of William III and the accession of Anne.

He was present at 62 per cent of the sittings of the first session of her first Parliament, in 1702-3, and on 19 Jan. 1703 he signed, as ‘Berkeley of Stratton’, the protest objecting to the decision to retain a clause in the bill settling a revenue on Prince George, of Denmark (also duke of Cumberland) which appeared to cast doubt on the right of the many Dutch peers to sit in the House. Three days previously he had also voted in favour of the wrecking amendments to the occasional conformity bill, and on 14 Dec. 1703 when the bill came to the House again in the following session of 1703-4, 61 per cent of whose sittings Berkely attended, he once again voted to reject it. He came to two-thirds of the meetings of the 1704-5 session, but from 7 Mar. 1705 identification of his activities once again becomes complicated as on that day the 2nd earl of Berkeley’s son and heir James Berkeley, the future 3rd earl of Berkeley, first sat in the House by a writ in acceleration as Baron Berkeley of Berkeley, thus introducing again another ‘Baron Berkeley’ into the Journal’s records. Even taking into account the possibility of misidentification between the two Baron Berkeleys – and Berkeley of Berkeley, a naval officer, was absent from the House during long periods – Berkeley of Stratton made little impact on the proceedings of the House during the 1705 Parliament. In its first session of 1705-6, when he attended exactly half of the sittings, he voted with the ministry to agree with the motion in the committee of the whole that the Church was not in danger under the present administration. WSHC, Ailesbury mss 3790/1/1, p. 60. He attended 69 per cent of the sessions of both 1706-7 and 1707-8.

Yet despite Berkeley of Stratton’s relative inaction in the House, contemporaries, and some modern historians, still attempted to classify his political views. A ‘Lord Barclay’ was marked as a supporter of the Hanoverians in an analysis from mid 1705, but unfortunately this vague indication could equally refer to Berkeley of Berkeley or even the earl of Berkeley. In or about March 1710 an annotator of a printed list of the peerage marked Berkeley of Stratton as a Whig. Certainly his scant record from 1701 – against the impeachment of the Junto peers, against the occasional conformity bill, against ‘the Church in Danger’ – were Whig positions, some even going against the wishes of the ministry. However, at precisely the time that this analysis was drawn up Berkeley of Stratton was undergoing a shift in allegiance which has allowed most modern historians to see him as a ‘court Tory’. Brit. Pols, 425; Holmes, Trial of Dr. Sacheverell, 284. Certainly he could be considered as such from 1710, but to what extent he can be considered either a courtier or a Tory before then is doubtful.

Berkeley sided with the Whigs and against the ministry of the lord treasurer Sidney Godolphin, earl of Godolphin, in the 1708-9 session of the new Parliament, when he was present at 45 per cent of the sittings. On 21 Jan. 1709 he voted against the motion that Godolphin’s ally James Douglas, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], had a right to vote in the election for the Scottish representative peers, even though he had recently been created a peer of Great Britain as duke of Dover. There was probably personal disgruntlement against Godolphin and his fellow minister John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, in this vote, for since at least February 1708 Berkeley of Stratton had been relying on these ministers to provide him with further advancement. To make his case he relied on the influence of his sister-in-law, the countess of Portland, with Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, both of them married to husbands highly involved in the Dutch war effort. In the course of her letters the countess of Portland took to soliciting for a further office for her brother-in-law through the duchess’s influence with both Marlborough and Godolphin. The duchess was initially happy to comply. In February 1708 she offered some ‘honourable’ position which nevertheless the countess thought would not be ‘agreeable to my Lord Berkeley’s quiet way of living’. Lady Portland insisted instead on a post in the commission of trade. She was sure, however, that ‘in whatever business he [Berkeley], was engaged in, he would give satisfaction in the discharging it’. These solicitations did not result in any concrete or acceptable offers and on 20 Feb. 1709, a month after Berkeley had shown his disgruntlement with Godolphin by his vote against Queensberry, the countess wrote again to the duchess reminding her of Berkeley’s need: ‘I am sure if he and I are so lucky as to gain any success in our desires we shall neither of us be of the number of those that are ungrateful to you’. Add. 61456, ff. 172-7.

Nothing came of these continual reminders and by the time of the 1709-10 session, when he came to 64 per cent of the sittings, Berkeley may have given up searching for promotion from the duumvirs, and the Whigs on whom they relied. He instead seems to have pinned his hopes on the rising opposition centred around Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford. This may explain his opposition to the prosecution of Dr. Henry Sacheverell throughout March 1710, shown by his subscription to three protests entered on 14 and 16 Mar. against resolutions that furthered the impeachment hearings, his vote of not guilty on 20 Mar. and another protest that day against the verdict. Marlborough was shocked by this unexpected betrayal. Writing to the duchess on 24 Mar., he included Berkeley among the nine peers whose voting he could not account for: ‘I should have thought all these would have been on the other side’. Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. iii. 1445. Harley hastened to encourage Berkeley’s defection by including him among the peers who were to be ‘provided for’ as he prepared for the change of ministry in September 1710. By 15 Sept. it was widely known that Berkeley was going to replace the Whig, James Stanley, 10th earl of Derby, as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, which Godolphin saw as a portent of ‘other removes of greater consequence, in order to the dissolution’. Add. 72500, ff. 4-5; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. iii. 1636. This appointment was made official on 21 Sept. and on that same day Berkeley was sworn on to the privy council and the Whig-dominated Parliament was dissolved. The replacement of the Whig and local grandee Derby by Berkeley, a stranger to the region, was a clear partisan move by Harley, but Berkeley himself did not act with party zeal in discharging his duties. Almost immediately after taking up his office he informed the Member for Wigan, Sir Roger Bradshaigh^‡, at that point trying to trim his political sails to the new ministry, that his ‘chief aim, all parties laid aside, is to find out the fittest men for their offices, and that will do the best service to the country’. Brit. Pols, 255. Although his first commission of the peace sealed as chancellor reinstated many Tories who had been left off the bench by Derby, one historian has judged that in his role as chancellor Berkeley of Stratton ‘pursued a policy of unspectacular but steady recruitment [of Tories], without significant purges [of Whigs]’. Glassey, JPs, 289-90.

Harley’s prediction that Berkeley would follow the new ministry’s line in Parliament proved to be accurate, and by the end of the first session of 1710-11, where Berkeley attended 77 per cent of the sittings, he was included in a list of ‘Tory patriots’ who had acquitted themselves well in the Parliament. He seems to have had a personal interest in the peace treaty with France. From at least late 1711 he was a close friend of the diplomat Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, and during Strafford’s mission to negotiate the Treaty of Utrecht in December 1711 he served as one of his most assiduous informants of political and social news in London. Add. 22220, passim; Add. 31141; Wentworth Pprs. On 27 Nov. 1711, a day of prorogation, Berkeley also helped to introduce to the House Charles Boyle, Baron Boyle of Marston (better known as 4th earl of Orrery [I]), a diplomat like Strafford and envoy to Brussels. On 10 Dec. 1711 he sided with the ministry in the motion to defeat the ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause in the address to the queen, but did not follow the ministry whole-heartedly in the peerage case of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton (and duke of Brandon in the British peerage); he abstained (‘went out’) at the division on 20 December. On 2 Jan. 1712 he helped to introduce to the House one of the 12 new peers created at the turn of the year, Thomas Mansell, Baron Mansell.

So it was that on 6 Jan. 1712 he was able to report to his friend Strafford in Utrecht the beginning of ‘a new world’: ‘the duke of Marlborough out of all his places, ... twelve new lords, at which some take offence, others laugh, though nobody can deny their being well chosen, at least most of them, for their estates and families’. He also reported to his friend the reception to the visit of Prince Eugene of Savoy and the pretensions of Hamilton ‘and his countrymen’ to make an address to the queen ‘about their being excluded the House of Lords’, and that ‘they flatter themselves with bringing that matter over again, but it is to be hoped that cannot be done’. Wentworth Pprs. 242. Over the following months he continued to keep Strafford informed of events in the House and at court, but he was mostly concerned with the progress of the peace and reporting to Strafford the negative reactions in Westminster to the peace terms, which he feared would give the malcontented Whigs further reason to complain and be obstructive – ‘However, a peace is necessary’, he concluded. Add. 22220, ff. 1-31; Wentworth Pprs. 242, 245, 257-9, 264-5, 271-2, 275-6, 278-9, 281-2, 285-9. Perhaps for that reason he was present in the House on 28 May 1712 when he voted against the motion to present the queen with an address against the ‘restraining orders’ preventing James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, from engaging in offensive actions against the French. PH, xxvi. 178. On that same day he began his long-running relationship with the secretary of state (and later lord privy seal) William Legge, earl of Dartmouth, as a proxy recipient. In the last weeks of the session Berkeley of Stratton registered his proxy with Dartmouth no fewer than three times – on 28 May, 2 June and 10 June – sometimes for absences as short as three days. All told he had come to two-thirds of the meetings of this session of 1711-12. Berkeley of Stratton’s attendance at virtually every single one of the prorogations of Parliament from July 1712 to March 1713, and the frustration he expressed in his letters to Strafford over these constant postponements of Parliament and the halting progress of the peace negotiations, suggests that he was keen to participate in discussions of the final settlement when it at last came before Parliament in April 1714. Add. 22220, ff. 32-61; Wentworth Pprs. 292-3, 295, 297-8, 300-1, 305-6, 310-13, 315-18, 322-4, 326-7. Yet after Parliament did finally convene on 9 Apr. 1713 Berkeley proceeded to sit for only 57 per cent of the meetings, although his running commentary on proceedings in the House to Strafford in Utrecht suggests that he was paying close attention to events in Westminster. Add. 22220, ff. 62-77; Wentworth Pprs. 328-34; 337-42. Oxford still predicted that he would support the French commercial treaty if it ever came to the House, and the commerce bill did take up much of his attention, even though he was forced to admit to Strafford on 14 June 1713 that ‘my head is so full of the business of trade, with hearing of nothing else, within and without the House of Lords, that it puts out all other thoughts, and yet [I], know so little of it, that I should get no credit with speaking of it’. In this affair he also had to give some grudging admiration to the Whigs, who were ‘elevated’ at the divisions among the Tories over the bill and ‘must have this justice done them, that they observe better discipline, but the others all think themselves fit to govern’. After the bill’s defeat in the Commons, Berkeley had to admit to Strafford, ‘I do not know what to say to you about the trade business, being stunned to find people so ready to divide upon every occasion, which must give a great advantage to another set, better regulated and united’. Wentworth Pprs. 337-40.

As the partisan frenzy increased between and within the parties in the last year of Anne’s reign, Berkeley of Stratton retired into a stance of moderation. He wrote to Strafford on 16 Mar. 1714 that he was impressed with recent statements of the electress of Hanover that she hated the names of Whigs and Tories, ‘invented only by ill designing people, but ought to be detested by all honest men, as well as by princes’. Ibid. 361-2. During the session of spring of 1714 in the following Parliament, when he came to 62 per cent of the meetings, he showed himself highly doubtful of the wisdom of the schism bill, even though Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham predicted he would be in favour of it, as ‘it will alarm the sectaries, and my humble opinion is that nobody should be made uneasy if it can be avoided, but I doubt it is designed to inflame the high Church against those of the ministry who do not appear zealous for this bill’. Ibid. 383. He left the session on 28 June 1714 and on 1 July registered his proxy yet again with the moderate Tory, Dartmouth, now lord privy seal, who retained it for the remaining three days. He was not present at all in the short session of August 1714 following the death of the queen and he made over his proxy on 6 Aug. 1714 to John Poulett, Earl Poulett, for the remainder of the session. He admitted to Strafford on 3 Aug. 1714 that ‘I am so stunned with all that hath happened within this week that I can hardly fix to do anything, after the melancholy scene at Kensington’. But, he continued, ‘my first thought after coming to Richmond was to write to your lordship’ and indeed during August and the following tense months Berkeley carefully reported to Strafford the various changes in court personnel and in party strength and alignments antecedent to the arrival of George I. Add. 22220, ff. 119-32; Wentworth Pprs. 409-10, 412-13, 416-17, 420-1, 427-9, 435-6.

By early October 1714, Berkeley looked upon himself as out of favour. He was dismissed as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster in early November, which he admitted to Strafford he found ‘rather a pleasure than an affliction, for I should have had more squabbles about elections and other vexations than I could have borne with patience’. Yet the king and his ministers assured him that his dismissal ‘was not with any design to discountenance me, or from any dislike’, and the secretary of state Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, offered him instead the post of first lord of the board of trade when the commission was overhauled in December 1714. Berkeley was also resworn onto the new Privy Council, and in January 1715 he was included in a list of Tories still in office in the new regime. However, the Whigs in the ascendant could not stand his tenure for long and by early January 1716 he was no longer serving on the board of trade. He appears to have been expecting as much. As early as November 1714 he had admitted to Strafford that he was not looking forward to working with his Whig colleagues and did not think he would last long there, ‘for I cannot alter my opinion of things, nor of persons neither’. Wentworth Pprs. 427-9, 435-6; Steele, Politics of Colonial Policy, 149-50, 176; Add. 47028, f. 7. Nor, as a Tory loyal to Anne’s last ministry and the peace negotiated by his friend Strafford, did he show a great deal of enthusiasm for the politics in the House during the new Whig regime. He took a more oppositional stance than he had in previous Parliaments, putting his name to more protests during George I’s reign than ever before.

Berkeley of Stratton resigned his Irish posts (the mastership of the rolls and its concomitant seat on the Irish Privy Council) in October 1731 and spent his last years at his house in his grandfather Berkeley’s ancestral manor of Bruton in Somerset, where he died on 24 Mar. 1741. VCH Som. vii. 24; Wentworth Pprs. 461; Add. 22220, ff. 134-5. His will, written in 1737, reveals a definite preference for the younger of his two surviving sons, Charles, who was constituted sole executor and was bequeathed the reversion of the Bruton estate, after Berkeley of Stratton’s trustees, Poulett and his brother-in-law Henry Temple, Viscount Palmerston [I], had sufficiently used the estate’s rents to provide for his eldest surviving daughter Jane. The manor was entailed on Charles, who duly took possession of it, but he died without issue in 1765 and was succeeded in the estate (according to the terms of the will) by his elder brother John Berkeley* [338], who had already succeeded to the title at his father’s death as 5th Baron Berkeley of Stratton.