BERKELEY, George (1627-98), of Berkeley Castle, Glos.

The Berkeleys had been at Berkeley from before the Norman Conquest. They were descended from one Eadnoth, ‘staller’ under Edward the Confessor, and his posterity’s intermarriage with the Norman, Robert Fitzharding, which resolved a local feud. Work on building the castle began during the reign of Stephen.43Rudder, New Hist. Glos. 270, 272; Bigland, Collections ed. Frith, 154; Jeayes, Catalogue, vii. Not only did the family dominate the parish of Berkeley from the imposing edifice of the castle, but they were proprietors of the hundred of that name, as well. The size of the Berkeleys’ patrimony, and its continuity, was described in breathless wonder by their Jacobean historian, John Smyth of Nibley, as

a miracle and blessing which the God of heaven and earth hath not by the visible testimonies of his mercy, bestowed upon any other family of like rank and honour, in generations never attainted, that the records of this king[dom] do declare.44Lives of the Berkeleys, ii. 437.

That patrimony was augmented in the early fifteenth century by Sir Laurence Berkeley†, one of a number of the family to serve in the House of Commons of that period.45HP Commons 1386-1421, ‘Sir Laurence Berkeley’. Many distinguished cadet branches of the family had sprung from the Berkeley line over the centuries.

George, 8th Baron Berkeley, our MP’s father, was brought up remote from Gloucestershire, was married at the age of 13, and was heir to a vast landed estate in at least four counties, the honours of Berkeley, Mowbray, Segrave and Bruce. Around Berkeley castle the towns of Tetbury and Portbury were his.46Oxford DNB; Lives of the Berkeleys, ii. 437. In February 1640, Lord Berkeley was asked by Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, to promote the candidacy of Sir Ralph Dutton as knight of the shire for Gloucestershire in the forthcoming Parliament. Berkeley in turn called upon John Smyth, his steward, to mobilise what support he could for Dutton.47Glos. RO, Smyth of Nibley vol. II, f. 90. When civil war broke out, Lord Berkeley did not return to the castle, which was garrisoned for Parliament by a detachment from Gloucester. After the sack of Cirencester by the royalists on 2 February 1643, a more oppressive parliamentarian force under Colonel George Forbes occupied the castle, and Forbes’s treatment of the Berkeley clients and retainers alienated men like John Smyth, who began to correspond with the royalists.48A.R. Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration in Gloucestershire 1640-1672 (Woodbridge, 1997), 20, 37, 44. The plunder and destruction by garrison commanders at Berkeley seems to have proceeded unchecked until September 1646, although Lord Berkeley was not a sequestered royalist.49Glos. RO, Smyth of Nibley vol. XI, ff. 36, 44; The Committee of Both Kingdoms* was evidently unsympathetic, and ordered the slighting of the castle to make it untenable, but Lord Berkeley was able to mobilise enough support in the Lords to secure an order forbidding further damage, as Berkeley had ‘suffered so deeply already for his adhering to the Parliament’.50LJ viii. 12a; Jeayes, Catalogue, 340. Berkeley himself remained in London, reporting in detached tones, in April 1648, on news from the Commons.

George Berkeley, Lord Berkeley’s second son, was not groomed to inherit the Berkeley interest. His elder brother, Charles, drowned in the English Channel on 27 January 1641, when George was around 14 years of age.51CP. This family tragedy must have struck around the time that George was at Christ Church, Oxford, which he left, like his father, without taking a degree. Also like his father, George Berkeley did not live at Berkeley, and seems instead to have lived in London, partly at a family residence at St John Jerusalem, Clerkenwell. His marriage in 1646 to the daughter of John Masingberd was a turning-point in his life, since it exposed him to the commercial, and specifically colonial trading, activities in which he later became distinguished. Masingberd had been elected treasurer of the East India Company in 1644, and Berkeley must have spent the late 1640s acquiring a knowledge of the Company’s activities.52Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1644-9, p. 31. With the marriage between Berkeley and Elizabeth Masingberd came involvement by John Masingberd in the evidently fairly chaotic business affairs of the Berkeleys: Lord Berkeley once confessed to his mother that he was used to living ‘upon uncertainties’.53Jeayes, Catalogue, 304-5; Glos. RO, Smyth of Nibley vol. II, f. 115.

Apart from nomination to the commission of the peace in 1646, election as knight of the shire for Gloucestershire in 1654 was George Berkeley’s initiation into public life. Although his election does not seem to have been contested, he made no impact at all on the first protectorate Parliament, being named to no committees. He was evidently regarded as someone with expertise on trade, however, and on 30 January 1656, he was co-opted on to the trade committee of the protectoral council.54CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 141. In the second protectorate Parliament, Berkeley was moderately busy in committee work. His first appointment, on 23 September, was to the important Scottish committee, and he was also in the early months of the assembly named to committees on customary oaths and on discovering popish recusants.55CJ vii. 427a, 435b, 463b. On this last-named body, he was critical of the draft legislation. To judge from his attitude to the Quaker, James Naylor, in debate in December 1656, Berkeley would have sought to temper any draconian clauses in the bill on recusancy. He sought adjournments of debates on two days, after debates on the fate of Naylor were becoming over-heated, and in a division was teller for the noes on a motion that he should be executed. He supported the view that Naylor was deranged and should be treated humanely, since violent punishment could only make him worse. When some of his colleagues were queuing up to suggest bloodthirsty mutilations, Berkeley suggested that the miscreant should have his hair cut off.56Burton’s Diary, i. 79, 147, 148, 150, 152, 153; CJ vii. 468a.

It was a hint of his future allegiances that Berkeley promoted the petition of the notorious royalist, Sir John Stawell*. While Luke Robinson wearily protested – ‘We have had enough of him already’ - Thomas Bampfylde and Edward Whalley, Presbyterians both, were more sympathetic. A petition from the leader of another family in rehabilitation, Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby, was also referred to a committee including Berkeley.57CJ vii. 472a; Burton’s Diary, i. 202. On 23 December, Berkeley was a teller in two divisions when a petition was offered to the House by London citizens led by Joshua Sprigge. The divisions were precipitated by Robert Barrington*, dissatisfied about the way the petition was handled, although Berkeley seemed to have a stronger objection, telling for those who wanted not to receive the petition at all.58CJ vii. 474a; Burton’s Diary, i. 216. It must have been Berkeley’s entrepreneurial interests that suggested him as a member of the committee on the land drainage schemes of Cornelius Vermuyden (9 Feb. 1657), and his Gloucestershire background qualified him eminently for the committee on Gloucester’s claims on lands in Ireland (19 Feb.).59CJ vii. 488b, 494a.

Berkeley supported the extension of the assessment for the army to four years, but was less enamoured of an army-sponsored bill intended to be employed against Quakers, but notionally against vagrants. The bill was presented by Major-general John Disbrowe, who had presided over the decimation tax in Gloucestershire. Later on the same day, 5 May 1657, Berkeley was again on the opposite side to Disbrowe. The latter opposed an adjournment, while Berkeley seconded a motion that the House should rise, which the diarist Thomas Burton* thought in order, despite Disbrowe’s grumbling of irregularities.60CJ vii. 530b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 29, 114, 116. Berkeley played a part in the presentation of the Humble Petition and Advice to the lord protector, although he was not listed among the ‘kinglings’ who voted to include the crowning of Cromwell in the first article of the Humble Petition on 25 March.61Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22. On 9 April, he was part of the committee to receive Cromwell’s ‘doubts and scruples’ about the Humble Petition, voiced in the speech of the previous day. On 23 May, he was part of the committee waiting on Cromwell for an opportunity to present him with the revised petition, shorn of its monarchical clauses. On 25 May, Cromwell called on Parliament to ‘perfect’ its resolves in the new constitution, and on the 27th Berkeley was a teller for those wanting not to read the ‘resolves’ of the Additional Petition and Advice in full. Presumably, this was further evidence of Berkeley’s preferences for limited debates, rather than any ideological objection.62CJ vii. 521b, 538b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 136.

Berkeley's only contribution to the short second session of this Parliament, in January and February 1658, was as a teller in a long debate on the style and title of the ‘Other House’, the upper chamber created by the Humble Petition.63Burton’s Diary, ii. 344. Berkeley inherited his father’s peerage in August that year. Before his death, the 8th Baron Berkeley, from Flanders, was corresponding with the exiled royalists, and George Berkeley continued his father’s services to the Stuarts after the collapse of the protectorate. In the summer of 1659, he was given government permission to travel between London and Surrey, but crossed the Channel to attend James Stuart, duke of York, in Brussels.64Jeayes, Catalogue, 340; CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 357, 372; 1659-60, pp. 36, 126, 170-1, 264. Soon after the Restoration of the monarchy, he was awarded the keepership of Nonsuch Park by the queen mother.65CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 359. In the county election for the Convention, Berkeley supported the re-forming Raglan interest of the Somerset family, and approved of the candidature of Matthew Hale*; opponents, he thought, ‘must want modesty and policy’.66Glos. RO, Smyth of Nibley vol. II, f. 97. He was solicited by various candidates at the Gloucestershire election for the Cavalier Parliament, but committed himself only for Sir Baynham Throckmorton†, and was content to leave the other choice to the voters.67Glos. RO, Smyth of Nibley vol. II, f. 100.

Berkeley was a committee member of the East India Company from August 1660, an office he held until his death. He was evidently in demand for the boards of other colonial companies, and maintained a watchful eye on their affairs on behalf of the duke of York.68Jeayes, Catalogue, 359. In an echo of his Cromwellian appointment, he sat on the council of trade from 1669.69CSP Dom. 1668-9, pp. 224-5. In 1661, he petitioned for higher precedence in the peerage, claiming his father’s minority and living overseas, and the civil wars, as reasons why the 8th earl had been unable to ‘effect the place of his ancestors’.70Glos. RO, Smyth of Nibley vol. III, f. 17; CP. His claim was still pending when he was created earl of Berkeley in 1679. One of the earliest members of the Royal Society, Berkeley was also an author of Historical Applications and Occasional Meditations (1670), a collection of Anglican and tory spiritual reflections. Dissenters could always exercise their consciences in their own homes, he reasoned, but they should obey the laws of the land. His assertion that ‘I have been ... willing to promote so far as lawfully I may, indulgence to all honest peaceable men ... so far as is consistent with public safety’ must have seemed hollow to nonconformist readers.71George, Lord Berkeley, Historical Applications and Occasional Meditations upon several Subjects (1670), 57-8. His allegiance to James II had fallen away by December 1688, when he signed the declaration to assist William of Orange. Berkeley’s eldest son, Sir Charles Berkeley†, sat in the Commons for Gloucester in October 1679 and in 1681.72HP Commons, 1660-1690, ‘Sir Charles Berkeley’.