BERKELEY, Maurice (c.1430-74), of Glos. and Bisterne, Hants.

Maurice’s first marriage, to a daughter of Reynold West, Lord de la Warre, was arranged in 1444 when he was aged about 14, and as part of the settlement on 2 Nov. that year his father obtained a royal licence to entail his manor of West Grimstead in Wiltshire on the young couple and their issue. Maurice owed his earliest return to Parliament for Hampshire in 1453 (when a young man of about 23), to the standing and wealth of his father, but he evidently quickly proved his ability for his public service on royal commissions began during the second session, and he took on a prominent role as a j.p., commissioner of array and sheriff in Hampshire well before his father died. Furthermore, it was he, rather than Sir Maurice, who attested the indenture of return at the shire court at Winchester for the Parliament of 1455. His aunt, Eleanor, dowager countess of Arundel and widow of Walter, Lord Hungerford†, left him a silver salt cellar and £40 in her will in July that year, and to his wife a Matins book covered with velvet. Following his father’s death in May 1460 he received seisin of the widespread and extremely lucrative Berkeley inheritance, except for properties held in dower and jointure by his mother. CPR, 1441-6, p. 346; C219/16/3; PCC 3 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 23v); C139/179/57; CFR, xix. 276.

That spring and summer Maurice was placed prominently on commissions set up to resist the supporters of the duke of York, not only in Hampshire but in a wide area of southern England. Clearly, he would have been expected to raise his own body of armed men to confront the Yorkist earls on their arrival in England from Calais, and to join the Lancastrian forces at the battle of Northampton in July. If he did so it made no difference to his continued service as a commissioner and j.p. under the new regime. He remained on the bench in both Hampshire and Gloucestershire following the accession of Edward IV, and was granted a pardon in June 1462. C67/45, m. 24. The new government kept him very active in local administration throughout the 1460s, including a term as sheriff in Gloucestershire as well as a second one in Hampshire. In addition, he was assigned other tasks by the Crown, such as to take the fealty of the new abbess of Romsey in 1462, and along with his brother Edward he was pricked as a juror at Winchester in August 1466 for the trial of rebels from the Isle of Wight. As sheriff, Maurice conducted the parliamentary elections at Winchester on 4 May 1467 when his brother was chosen as a shire knight, and, contrary to the ordinance which prohibited the return of sheriffs, he himself was returned for Gloucestershire. CPR, 1461-7, p. 188; KB9/299/25, 314/86, 87; C219/17/1.

It was inevitable that Maurice’s duties as sheriff would be neglected while Parliament was in session in June that year, but he must have delegated them to deputies for much of that term of office for by this stage in his career he had been brought into the inner circle of the royal court as a squire for the King’s body, and on 2 Nov. the King granted him 50 marks as a reward for good service and daily attendance on his person in the year since Michaelmas 1466. It is a measure of his personal relations with King Edward that Berkeley was to receive a further 50 marks in the following year, and twice that amount in 1469. Well placed to take advantage of royal patronage, in May 1468 he was permitted to purchase at the Exchequer for £20 the wardship and marriage of a Hampshire landowner, Richard Puncherton. E404/73/3/45, 74/1/134; E403/839, m. 5; 840, m. 3; 842, m. 13; CFR, xx. 241.

There can be no doubt of Berkeley’s attachment to Edward IV. He was among the commissioners appointed to try for treason (Sir) Thomas Hungerford* (the son and heir of Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns, who had been executed in 1464), and Henry Courtenay (the dispossessed heir to the earldom of Devon), and was duly present at Salisbury in January 1469 when the two men were attainted and beheaded. He was also close to the King in the following summer when Edward moved north to combat the rebels led by Robin of Redesdale, and on 9 July Edward selected him and Sir Thomas Montgomery† to bear messages to the disaffected duke of Clarence, the earl of Warwick and the archbishop of York, dispatching them with letters of credence ‘in that on our behalf thei shal declare to you’. CPR, 1485-94, p. 149; Paston Letters, ii. 360. The King was then still hoping that the rumours that these three were traitors might be proved false, but whether Berkeley made much headway as an intermediary between the royal brothers is not recorded, and before too long Edward’s favourites Humphrey Stafford IV*, earl of Devon, and Sir William Herbert*, earl of Pembroke, had been killed by rebel forces and he himself taken prisoner. Berkeley is not mentioned again until after Edward recovered his freedom in October. Similarly, his whereabouts during the Readeption of Henry VI from October 1470 to the spring of 1471 are uncertain. It seems very likely, however, that he chose to go into exile with his royal master, for as soon as Edward regained power after his return to England he reappointed his loyal esquire as sheriff of Hampshire, and Berkeley was at his side at the battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May. He was knighted on the field. Clearly, Edward trusted him implicitly and kept him close as a knight for the body. Nevertheless, he was also needed to restore order in the localities. Immediately after the end of this term as sheriff of Hampshire, he was appointed to the shrievalty of Wiltshire, and a pardon issued to him on 20 Jan. 1472 refers to him as lieutenant of the New Forest. A month later, as ‘King’s knight’ he was granted for life the office of constable of Southampton castle, receiving £10 p.a. as his fee from the customs of Southampton. He lent Edward the sum of £30, which in April the King ordered to be assigned to him from the issues of Wiltshire for which as sheriff he had to make account at the Exchequer. His proximity to the King is further indicated by the fact that after his death he was referred to as one of the Edward’s ‘counsellors’, but whether this meant participation in informal consultations or a more formal membership of the Council is unclear. Sir Maurice was returned to Parliament for Hampshire again in the autumn of 1472, with his brother Edward presiding over the hustings as sheriff. Once more he was in breach of the ordinance prohibiting the return of sheriffs, although his shrievalty of Wiltshire had only a few weeks left to run. Just after the end of the second parliamentary session, in April 1473, he was appointed surveyor of all royal officials in the ports of Southampton and Poole. Paston Letters, iii. 9; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 309, 361, 391; 1476-85, p. 337; E404/75/2/10.

Over the years Berkeley had been much in demand as a trustee of estates in Hampshire. He was on excellent terms with the war veteran and diplomat Sir John Popham* (d.1463), a neighbour of his, whose will he undertook to execute, and whose kinsman, Charles Bulkeley of Nether Burgate, he assisted in property transactions. Together with his brother Edward he was enfeoffed of the former Fitzalan and Mautravers estates along with their cousin, William, earl of Arundel, in 1465, no doubt doing so at the earl’s behest. Both brothers had earlier been party to the conveyance of part of the manor of Eastleigh to the lawyer Thomas Welles*, the deputy steward of the estates of the bishopric of Winchester and steward of those of Winchester College, CP40/829, rot. 279; Hants RO, Bulkeley and Coventry mss, 396-7, 402; CAD, ii. B2168; CP25(1)/207/34/2; CPR, 1461-7, p. 444. The pardon he obtained in 1468 referred to his executorship of Popham’s will: C67/46, m. 22. and it was probably in the interest of the college, where Berkeley was always a welcome visitor, that he became a feoffee of the lands which Margaret, Lady Botreaux and Hungerford sold it in the mid 1460s. His kinsman and brother-in-law William, Lord Berkeley, entrusted him with a sizable part of his inheritance at Berkeley castle and elsewhere in Gloucestershire. During the 1470s Sir Maurice continued his association with the earl of Arundel, and also acted for Gillian, widow of Thomas Tame*. CP25(1)/207/34/4; Winchester Coll. muns. 1221, 10157-60, 13926-30; CAD, i. B512; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1026; 1476-85, no. 118; Archaeologia, lxxv. 155. Thomas Uvedale†, an associate both in public service and private transactions, made him a trustee of his principal manor of Wickham; Eleanor Moleyns, widow of the 3rd Lord Hungerford and now wife of Sir Oliver Manningham, engaged him as a feoffee of estates in five counties; and he was licenced to effect an entail of the manor of Aldermaston, Berkshire, for a fellow Member of the Commons of 1472, Thomas de la Mare†. CP25(1)/294/76/88; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 374; 1477-85, p. 523. Berkeley’s diplomatic skills were also widely appreciated. He had earlier represented Richard Beauchamp, bishop of Salisbury, in negotiations with the citizens of Salisbury seeking to bring to an end the many years of dispute between them over the city’s liberties, and in December 1471 he was formally named as an arbitrator between the parties. Wilts. Hist. Centre, Salisbury ledger bk. 2, G23/1/2, ff. 83v, 105v.

Berkeley’s second marriage reflects his standing on an equal basis with members of the lesser nobility. When Richard, Lord Grey of Powis, died in 1466, some of his property in Wales was still in the possession of Berkeley’s aunt, Elizabeth (d.1478), the widow of Grey’s great-grandfather, and perhaps it was she who arranged the match between her nephew and Grey’s relict, Margaret. As her jointure from Lord Richard, Margaret held a moiety of the manor of Alton, Hampshire, and lands as far away as Yorkshire, at Cottingham and Hessle. She should also have been in possession of landed holdings to the value of £100 p.a. as her jointure from an earlier marriage, to Sir Roger Vaughan, but, as she explained in a petition to Chancery, Vaughan and his son Thomas had failed to complete the marriage settlement, and her half-brother John Audley*, now Lord Audley, and Bishop Stanbury of Hereford refused to return to her the bonds guaranteeing the award so she might sue for redress. CP, iii. 161-2; vi. 139-40; C1/43/28. Berkeley assigned to his new wife property valued at £80 p.a. to hold for life. For his two children by his first wife he now arranged a double match with offspring of William Stourton*, 2nd Lord Stourton: before May 1467 his daughter Katherine (d.1494) married Lord Stourton’s son and heir, John, the future 3rd Lord (d.1485), and her brother William, Berkeley’s own heir, was married to the latter’s sister, another Katherine. CCR, 1485-1500, no. 785; CFR, xxii. nos. 477, 517-20; CP, vi. 131-2; xii (1), 303.

In October 1473 Berkeley and others obtained a royal licence to found a perpetual chantry in the chapel lately built by John Champflour in the parish church at Alton, where prayers might be said for the King, queen and prince of Wales, as well as for the founders, and to endow it with land worth £10 a year. CPR, 1467-77, p. 417. He himself did not have long to live. He made his will four months later, on 20 Feb., naming as his executors his son and heir, William, his brother Edward, Master John Baker D.Th. (the warden of Winchester College), and the college’s steward, Thomas Welles. His widow was to keep for life land at Bisterne worth £20 p.a. (over and above the estate settled on her when they married), and to be allowed to continue dwelling there, but if she married again or permitted anyone else to live in the manor-house without her stepson’s agreement, she was to forfeit this concession. She was also allowed household goods to the value of £50, provided she did nothing to hinder the administration of the will. Berkeley ordered that the parish church of Kington Magna in Dorset be appropriated to the Berkeley chantry at Mere, Wiltshire, to pay for religious services for his parents, wives and children and for Sir John Popham, and to keep the obits of Popham and himself. The chantry was bequeathed a gold chain he had recently had made. His heir was left a substantial amount of plate, including two silver pots bearing the Hungerford arms and a silver gilt standing cup called ‘Fitzhugh’ (presumably passed down from his mother’s family). Berkeley instructed that property in Lockerley and elsewhere which he had purchased in reversion from Robert Payn, was to be appropriated to Christchurch Twynham priory, where he was to be buried in the Lady chapel, thus providing a stipend for a priest to pray for his parents and himself for ever. He died on 26 Mar. PCC 15 Wattys; E149/228/6. It is not known who took Sir Maurice’s seat as shire knight for Hampshire in the Parliament which was to run for three more sessions before its dissolution a year later in 1475, but perhaps his heir did so. The latter, who took his place in the Household by becoming an esquire for the body of Edward IV, immediately succeeded him as constable of Southampton as well. In testamentary arrangements made on 28 May 1475 in preparation for joining the royal expedition to France, he asked his and his father’s feoffees to pay their debts, and arranged for a new chantry chapel to be built in Christchurch priory, called ‘Berkeley’s chapel’, using the former Payn lands for the endowment. This chapel was erected before November 1482, when William obtained a licence to endow it with land worth ten marks a year. PCC 24 Logge (PROB11/7, ff. 187-8); CPR, 1467-77, p. 447; 1476-85, p. 337.