BERKELEY, Hon. Charles Paget Fitzhardinge (1830-1916), of Old Park, Chichester, Suss. of 39 Hill Street, Berkeley Square, London, Mdx.

Berkeley’s father had been born illegitimately to the 5^th earl of Berkeley, and sat for Gloucester on three occasions between 1831 and 1857, serving several times as a lord of the admiralty.1HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 261-2; A. Lambert, ‘Berkeley, Maurice Frederick Fitzhardinge Berkeley’, Oxf. DNB, v. 386-7. In 1857 he succeeded his brother, William, 1^st earl Fitzhardinge, to the vast Berkeley estates and was awarded a barony in his own right in 1861.2Four of Berkeley’s paternal uncles represented seats in Gloucestershire, see HP Commons, 1832-1868: ‘Berkeley, Hon. Francis William Fitzhardinge’.

In April 1859 Berkeley’s father was asked to allow Berkeley to stand as the second Liberal candidate for West Gloucestershire at the general election, but declined on the ground that to put forward ‘an entire stranger’ to the local party risked dividing the Liberal vote.3Daily News, 27 Apr. 1859. Berkeley was, however, returned for Gloucester as a Liberal in February 1862, the writ for the by-election having been suspended since July 1859, when the general election result had been declared void on account of bribery.4W.R. Williams, The Parliamentary History of the County of Gloucester (1898), 217. A parliamentary commission subsequently discovered widespread corruption in the borough, and it was not until February 1862 that Berkeley’s uncle, Henry Berkeley, successfully moved for a new writ to be issued: Morning Post, 3 Aug., 27 Sept. 1859; PP 1859 session 2 (127), iii. 201; Morning Chronicle, 31 Jan. 1860; PP 1860 [2586] xxvii. 1; Hansard, 28 June 1861, vol. 164, cc. 97-104; 20 Feb. 1862, vol. 165, cc. 498-512. After citing his father’s record as a representative of the borough, and declaring his ‘high estimation of Lord Palmerston’s government’, most particularly their management of Anglo-American relations in ‘the recent Trent affair’, he was returned at the top of the poll alongside a second Liberal. At Westminster he sat alongside his brother, Francis, who had been Liberal MP for Cheltenham since 1856.

Berkeley had acted as private secretary to his father when a lord of the admiralty in the early 1850s, and seemed well-briefed on the size and state of preparedness of the Royal Navy. After raising a number of issues in the House concerning the fleet,5Hansard, 9 May 1862, vol. 166, cc. 1472-3; 5 Mar. 1863, vol. 169, c. 1106. he was appointed to the select committee on navy promotions and retirement in April 1863, and that June spoke against a motion for an inquiry into the constitution of the admiralty board.6PP 1863 (501) x. 71; Hansard, 24 June 1863, vol. 171, cc. 1403-4. He proved to be a thorn in the side of both the secretary of war and the admiralty secretary as, being forearmed with a plethora of statistics, he frequently tabled questions and intervened in debates on the funding of the army and navy.7Hansard, 3 July 1862, vol. 167, c. 1336; 13 Mar. 1863, vol. 169, c. 1333; 25 Feb. 1864, vol. 173, cc. 1151-2; 29 Feb. 1864, vol. 173, cc. 1284-5, 1310. In May 1864 he pointed to anomalies in the army estimates and, in moving an amendment to the vote, called for the accounts to be ‘rendered in an accurate and distinct form to the House’.8Hansard, 9 May 1864, vol. 175, cc. 203-4, 214.

Largely progressive in politics, Berkeley voted against Whalley’s motion for a committee of the House to reconsider the Maynooth Act, 6 May 1862, and voted for the second reading of the church rates abolition bill, 14 May 1862. He was on hand to back Palmerston against Stansfield’s resolution on national expenditure, 3 June 1862, but opposed the government’s public building scheme, voting against both the British Museum bill, 19 May 1862, and Gladstone’s motion for government funds to purchase the exhibition buildings at Kensington, 2 July 1863.9M.H. Port, Imperial London. Civil Government Building in London 1851-1915 (1995), 98. That month he proved troublesome to the Liberal ministry in regard to its fortifications bill. Questioning the scale of the proposed expenditure, he accused the government of resorting to ‘the usual expedient of “cooking the accounts”’, and voted against the second reading of the bill, 9 July.10Hansard, 9, 13 July 1863, vol. 172, cc. 470, 687-8. He also divided against the government over the vote of £25,000 for the Spithead forts, and a year later drew attention to the ‘confusion and disorder’ which attended British coastal defences in west Africa.11T.A. Jenkins (ed.), The Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865 (1990), 263-5; Hansard, 21 July 1864, vol. 176, c. 1865.

Berkeley opposed the second reading of Somes’s Sunday closing bill, 3 June 1863, and having already backed the ballot motion of his kinsman, Henry Berkeley, in July 1862, voted for the measure again, 16 June 1863 (and would again a year later). He also voted against the ministry for a reduction of fire insurance duties, 14 July, and supported a motion for junior civil service posts to be filled by open competition, 17 July 1863. He did, however, back the ministry by voting against Seymour Fitzgerald’s motion for the production of government correspondence with Laird Brothers regarding their supply of ironclad ships to the navy, 23 Feb. 1864. In April 1864 Berkeley sat on the inquiry into the Belfast improvement bill and also served on the select committee on dockyards, for the security of which he would display increasing concern.12PP 1864 (348) (348-I) vi. 1, 501; PP 1864 (270) viii. 7; PP 1864 (496) (496-I) viii. 75, 271; Hansard, 7 Apr. 1865, vol. 178, c. 953.

Berkeley was sympathetic to the cause of Dissenters and, having divided with the minority in favour of Peto’s burials bill, 15 Apr. 1863, voted for the second reading of the tests abolition (Oxford) bill, 16 Mar. 1864, paired in favour of the measure in committee, 1 June, and divided in favour of the second reading of Bouverie’s Uniformity Act amendment bill, 13 July 1864. He also endorsed parliamentary reform, voting for the county and borough franchise bills, 13 Apr., 11 May 1864, and backing the second reading of Baines’s borough franchise bill, 8 May 1865.

At the 1865 general election Berkeley and his colleague deferred to the prior claim of the two Liberal members who had been unseated in 1859, and retired. Described as being ‘in the prime of life, possessed of great abilities and energy, and a warm supporter of Liberal principles’, he was requisitioned ‘by a very large body of electors’ to stand for West Gloucestershire at the by-election of July 1867, caused by the sitting Conservative MP’s elevation to the bench.13Bristol Mercury, 13 July 1867. Advocating the abolition of church rates, greater efficiency in government spending, and the selective introduction of the ballot, Berkeley credited the Liberal party with having changed the Conservatives’ reform bill beyond recognition, but pointed to the continued need for an effective redistribution of seats.14Bristol Mercury, 27 July 1867. In a hard fought contest, during which Berkeley was inaccurately charged with ‘having been taken before a London magistrate and fined £5 for being present at a cock fight’, he was narrowly defeated by a cousin of the duke of Beaufort.15Morning Post, 30 July 1865; Standard, 1 Aug. 1867. At the 1874 general election he was beaten into third place at West Gloucestershire, having been absent at the time in Egypt, where he had gone to benefit his health.16Bristol Mercury, 7 Feb. 1874.

In June 1896 Berkeley succeeded his brother to the Fitzhardinge barony and an estate of more than 18,000 acres in Gloucestershire, along with valuable property in Mayfair, London. He sat in the Lords but does not appear to have spoken there.17Bristol Mercury, 1 Sept. 1896. Along with Berkeley Castle, he owned Cranford House, Hounslow and 1,471 acres of land in Dorset: J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 167; Who Was Who, 1916-1928, 358. He died at Berkeley Castle and was buried at Berkeley church on 9 December 1916. His will was proved in February 1917 at £457,786 gross and, having no heir, the barony of Fitzhardinge became extinct, his estates reverting to Randal Thomas Berkeley, who had successfully established his right to the title of 8^th earl of Berkeley in 1891.18The Times, 6 Dec. 1916; G.E.C., Complete Peerage, v. 412; J. Shorter, ‘Berkeley, Randal Thomas Mowbray Rawdon, eighth earl of Berkeley’, Oxf. DNB, v. 388-9.