BERKELEY, John (1607-78)

BERKELEY, John (1607–78)

cr. 19 May 1658 Bar. BERKELEY of STRATTON.

First sat 4 June 1660; last sat 27 May 1678

MP Heytesbury 1640 (Apr.)

bap. 1 Feb. 1607, 5th s. of Sir Maurice Berkeley‡ of Bruton, Som. and Elizabeth, da. of William Killigrew of Hanworth, Mdx. educ. Queen’s, Oxf. matric. 1623, BA 1625; travelled abroad (Low Countries, Germany) c.1626.1 m. bef. 1662, Christian (Christina) (d.1698), da. and h. of Sir Andrew Riccard, of St Olave’s, Hart Street, London., gov. and treas. E.I. Co., wid. of John Gayer (Gayre, Geare) of Stoke Poges, Bucks., and of Henry Rich, styled Ld. Kensington, 4s. (1 d.v.p.) 1da.2 kntd. 27 July 1639. d. 26 Aug. 1678; will 21 Jan. 1672, pr. 2 Oct. 1678.3

Gov. to James, duke of York, 1648-50, 1652-60;4 comptroller of household to duke of York 1652-60, steward 1660-?68;5 extraordinary commr. Navy July 1660-Jan. 1665;6 commr. trade Nov. 1660-72, plantations Dec. 1660-70, for Tangier 1665, 16737, prize appeals 1666,8 for estates of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, 1665-70;9 ld. pres. of Connaught 1661-73;10 PC 17 June 1663; 1st commr. office of master-gen. of Ordnance Oct. 1664-May 1670;11 PC [I] Jan. 1668-70;12 ld. lt. Ireland Feb. 1670-May 1672; cttee. for trade and May 1675-d.

Amb., Sweden Jan.-July 1637, France Oct. 1675-Oct. 1676; plenip. congress at Nimeguen Oct. 1676-June 1677.

Capt. tp. of horse by 1639-41; maj. gen. horse (roy.) 1642; commissary gen. of horse 1642; col. gen. Cornw. and Devon 1644; gov. Exeter Sept. 1643-Apr. 1646; capt. tp. of horse [I] c.1662-73;13 lt. gen. militia forces Suff., Cambs. and Isle of Ely June-Aug. 1667;14 gov. Galway and const. Athlone Castle 1661.

Ld. prop. Carolina 1663-d.;15 prop. Virginia 1649-d.,16 New Jersey 1664-76.17

Mbr. Royal Adventurers into Africa 1661-72; Royal Fishing Co. 1664.18

Associated with: Berkeley House, Piccadilly, London, and Twickenham Park, Mdx.19

Servant to the duke of York

Berkeley was the youngest son of a wealthy Somerset family, a cadet branch of the Barons Berkeley of Berkeley. His great-grandfather, Sir Maurice Berkeley‡, had established and raised the family’s standing in the eastern quarters of Somerset during the course of a long and successful career under the Tudors. Berkeley spent the beginning of his career in spells of foreign travel and military service and soon established a foothold at court. His entrée there was greatly assisted by the vice-chamberlain of the queen’s household, his kinsman Henry Jermyn, later earl of St Albans. Berkeley and Jermyn would later work together on behalf of French interests at court, particularly in the early stages of the Restoration. Another newcomer at the court in 1633 was Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, with whom Berkeley struck up a close friendship. Clarendon always believed that the knighthood which Berkeley received in 1639 was a reward both ‘for all the services he had done, or could ever do’, and had ‘corrupted his nature’ making him believe that he was both capable of and deserving of much more.20

During the Civil War Berkeley saw service as a royalist commander in the West Country, earning the gratitude of the queen when he facilitated the escape of the infant Princess Henrietta to France. In later life Berkeley, ever boastful of his achievements, was in the habit of embellishing his role in the abortive negotiations that took place between the king and the parliamentarian chiefs after the surrender at Exeter. Berkeley’s involvement in the king’s bungled flight to the Isle of Wight in November 1647 also became a heroic deed in his own telling (his own account was published in 1699 as Memoirs of Sir John Berkeley). In the early summer of 1648 he was (presumably through Jermyn’s influence) sent by the queen to The Hague as York’s governor as a temporary replacement in the absence of Richard Byron†, Baron Byron. On Byron’s death in August 1652 Berkeley, without waiting for royal word, declared himself ‘intendant des affairs de son altesse royale’, and assumed control over the duke’s finances. It was at about this time that Berkeley’s relationship with Hyde began to sour. The final breach in 1653 was caused by Berkeley’s solicitations for the recently vacant post of master of the wards which he claimed had been promised him by Charles I, and which carried an ex officio place on the council. The king refused the request; Berkeley believed that the advice had come from Hyde.21

In 1656 (against the king’s wishes) Berkeley and his royal protégé joined the exiled court in the Spanish Netherlands. Sir Henry Bennet, later earl of Arlington, acting in league with Hyde, was able to persuade the king that Berkeley was covertly in contact with Oliver Cromwell‡. Berkeley does appear to have been approached by Cromwellian agents who were intent on creating a breach between the duke and his brother the king. The king’s dismissal of Berkeley and his associates from the court provoked James’s own swift and wrathful exit from the Netherlands in January 1657, forcing Charles to seek a reconciliation. Berkeley was reinstated in the duke’s service and at about this time James procured for Berkeley the promise of a peerage, despite, as Clarendon later wrote, his having ‘no pretence of any one acre of land in the world, nor being worth the clothes he wore’.22 In spite of critical comment from other courtiers, the patent creating him Baron Berkeley of Stratton, commemorating one of his Cornish victories during the Civil War, was issued at Brussels on 19 May 1658. As Clarendon observed, it ‘served only to whet his appetite, and for an argument to the king to confer an estate … upon him’; it was wholly characteristic that he should jib at the payment of fees to the clerk who had drawn the patent.23

During these final years of the royal exile Berkeley succeeded in placing himself in the first rank of royal retainers. Aware of his own unassailability, Berkeley threw himself into further meddling and intrigue, especially against Hyde. In the spring of 1659 one of Hyde’s informants reported that ‘Lord Berkeley’s party’ was busily engaged in prejudicing Henry Carey‡, 4th Viscount Falkland [S], against Hyde; while Hyde informed Secretary Edward Nicholas‡ in September that ‘he has a thousand projects without head or foot’.24 Berkeley’s links with Catholics and his favourable attitudes towards the roman church also drew disapproving comment during the mid and later 1650s, though despite the pro-Catholic tendencies, he later evinced in relation to his Irish interests that there was never any talk of his having actually converted. The ambiguity of his religious stance was, though, sufficiently pronounced to cause Ormond to make enquiries about his views in the early days of the Restoration.25

Berkeley returned to England at the Restoration as a senior fixture within York’s circle. Not unnaturally, he expected a significant and lucrative position in the reconstructed government. According to Clarendon, James had by this stage grown ‘very weary’ of him, but for the sake of their old connection felt obliged to continue to satisfy Berkeley’s unending demands.26 Berkeley now devoted his energies to the aggrandizement of his aristocratic status. The first of a long string of posts which he was to acquire during the 1660s came in July 1660 with his appointment as a navy commissioner, but as Samuel Pepys‡ later commented, this was done only ‘for want of other ways of gratification’.27 Initial thoughts of making him lord deputy of Ireland had quickly evaporated.28 Clarendon saw him as a hindrance as well as a liability whom it was necessary to marginalize as much as possible. Pepys, who encountered Berkeley in his professional capacity at the admiralty, remarked of his performance at a meeting of the Royal Fishing Company in 1664 that he ‘is the most hot, fiery man in discourse, without any cause, that I ever saw’.29 Throughout the 1660s, certainly as long as Clarendon remained in office, Berkeley’s involvement in government office was confined to membership of various administrative boards and councils – the navy, the ordnance, trade and plantations – where the burden of work was shouldered by others. The powerful streak of self-obsession in Berkeley’s character had the effect of distancing him from the leaders of political factions at Charles II’s court. According to Clarendon ‘he had no friends who heartily esteemed him ... all men of parts who ever had a good opinion of him retired from it quickly, and threw him quite off, or lived with a dry formality with him’.30

It was a frequent complaint that the subject of his past deeds or his idiosyncratic opinions often filled his invariably impassioned discourse. His military vanity was boundless. Clarendon stated that he ‘valued himself in that profession as if he had been lieutenant general to Julius Caesar’; Pepys was warned of Berkeley’s fondness for boasting that he had fought on more battlefields than any man in England.31 His deeply ingrained military outlook played a strong part in shaping his attitudes to post-Restoration government. To the end of his life he remained contemptuous of civil government, bemoaning the fact that England’s social elite did not give prominence to ‘the art and discipline’ of war in the manner of her rivals, the French. He was especially critical of what he saw as the corrosive influence of lawyers upon the royal prerogative and was convinced that if Charles II had been ‘restored by the sword’ he would have had no difficulty in resuming the ‘ancient prerogative’ of his forebears.32 His admiration for French absolutism was evinced in 1663 in the approval he showed of penalties lately decreed by Louis XIV against French nobles who had falsely assumed titles.33

Ireland and the House of Lords, 1660-70

Although Clarendon gives the impression that James wanted to be rid of Berkeley and that his personal attachment to him had waned, Berkeley was one of several ‘military’ retainers who helped to give weight to the duke’s following. The extent of Berkeley’s control over the duke’s financial affairs (as well as the scope it allowed for his unscrupulous financial behaviour) was hinted at in the early summer of 1663 and again in gossip circulating in the late 1660s. On the latter occasion it was suggested that Berkeley was wringing healthy profits from his administration of the wine licence grant which the duke had been given in 1661.34 According to Clarendon, James also gave Berkeley generous financial support on his marriage. In January 1661 at James’s behest, Berkeley was appointed to the highly lucrative office of lord president (or governor) of Connaught in Ireland for life. The king acquiesced, so Clarendon states, only because he believed he would be rid of Berkeley who initially undertook to execute the office in person, the better to exploit perquisites which included a yearly pension of £1,200 and a sizeable income from rents.35 The grant of £1,000 given him ‘for the king’s service’ in October 1661 may well have been in connection with his assumption of this office.36 It was typical, however, that Berkeley should remain in Ireland only long enough to lease the office at a ‘good yearly rent’.37

Berkeley’s penchant for ‘projects’, and his love of money-making, involved him in several major colonial ventures during the 1660s. By virtue of his brother, Sir William Berkeley’s, position as governor of Virginia, he had since 1649 been a proprietor of a large stretch of Virginian lands, a grant which was renewed in 1667.38 It was largely through the Berkeley connection that his friend and former comrade-in-arms, the Barbadian planter Sir John Colleton (whose baronetcy Berkeley had obtained from the king in 1661), secured the duke of York’s support for a project to open up the mainland Carolina area of North America for plantation. This resulted in 1663 in a group of proprietors, headed by Clarendon, Colleton and his kinsman George Monck, duke of Albemarle, and Berkeley, receiving a royal grant of the vast Carolina lands extending from Virginia southwards to Spanish Florida.39 On Albemarle’s death in 1670 Berkeley became senior proprietor and ‘palatine’ of Carolina.40 In June 1664 James made Berkeley and Berkeley’s close associate on the navy board, Sir George Carteret‡, sole proprietors of a large portion of the province of New Netherland (renamed New York). Berkeley subsequently sold his ‘western’ share of New Jersey to a group of English Quakers in 1676.41 In 1661 he had also joined other leading courtiers in becoming a major shareholder in the newly chartered Royal African Company.

Berkeley combined attention to these varied concerns with often assiduous attendance of the House of Lords, though the presence of his kinsman, George Berkeley, 9th Baron Berkeley of Berkeley (later earl of Berkeley), makes for some confusion in identifying his activity. He seems to have addressed the House only infrequently. Clarendon’s observation that he had ‘a very obscure and troubled expression in debate’ perhaps explains why.42 His preferred area of contribution, it seems, was in the select committees to which he was a regular nominee.

Berkeley appears to have taken his place for the first time on 4 June 1660, when he was added to the committees for privileges and petitions. It was not, though, until the following day that he first featured on the attendance list. Assuming that he was present on 4 June, he attended in all 35 days of the session prior to the September adjournment. On 23 Aug. he was one of five peers nominated to mediate between the freemen and corporation of Exeter. He resumed his place on 6 Nov. and attended approximately 60 per cent of the remaining days of the Convention. He was missing from the attendance list on 24 Nov. but appears to have taken his seat later in the day as he was subsequently nominated to the committee considering the bill for arrears of assessments. Alongside his attendance of the Lords he acted as agent for his master, York, in negotiations with the French envoy, Bordeaux. Berkeley and St Albans (as Jermyn had since become) were also at pains to refute accusations that Bordeaux had been involved with trying to persuade Monck to set himself up as protector.43

The scandal of York’s marriage to Anne Hyde also involved Berkeley and St Albans as they attempted, in alliance with the princess royal, to devise a solution to the crisis. The king’s response was an insistence on expedients being found ‘on condition that they did not violate divine law’. Berkeley was said to have had suggested one expedient far from keeping with ‘divine law’: namely, to kidnap Anne Hyde and her son and throw them both into the Thames. He was also one of those to insist on having been one of Anne Hyde’s other lovers.44

Berkeley returned to the House for the opening of the Cavalier Parliament and on 19 June he was entrusted with the proxy of John Crofts, Baron Crofts. He received that of his kinsman, George Berkeley*, Baron Berkeley of Berkeley, the following year on 21 April.45 On 10 July he was nominated to the committee for the bill for regulating the navy, a matter in which he had considerable interest as one of the commissioners at the admiralty. Six days later, although again omitted from the attendance list, he was named to the committee for drawing up a bill concerning penal laws against Catholic priests. Following the summer recess, and perhaps underlining Berkeley’s fondness to be identified as a capable soldierly upholder of the regime, he was one of a committee of 12 peers nominated to meet with a corresponding group from the Commons to consider rumours of a plot believed to be in agitation.

In August 1661 Berkeley had been one of three to be awarded some of the estates formerly belonging to Cromwell. The following March, the same three were granted estates of two other regicides in trust for York.46 Following the close of the parliamentary session in May 1662 Berkeley returned to his duties in Ireland. He had been expected to set out with the lord lieutenant, James Butler, duke of Ormond [I] and earl of Brecknock, in mid July but at the last moment resolved to delay his departure, according to the French envoy, ‘to see how the Catholics of that kingdom would react to the arrival of the viceroy’. In the event it was not until the middle of the following month that he finally set out for Ireland, arriving eventually in company with Ormond’s son Richard Butler, earl of Arran [I] (later Baron Butler of Weston in the English peerage).47 Within a few months, however, serious differences had emerged between himself and Arran’s father concerning Berkeley’s wish to spend most of his time in England and have his nephew Sir Maurice Berkeley‡ act as his deputy in the Connaught presidency. Berkeley’s previous relations with Ormond, which had been amicable enough for him to loan money to the cash-strapped duke, now came under strain as Ormond communicated his complaints about Berkeley’s intended absenteeism to Clarendon, thereby exacerbating the old tensions between Berkeley and the lord chancellor.48 Ormond may well have felt his authority slighted when Berkeley obtained royal permission to depart from Ireland in January 1663.49

On 18 Feb. 1663 Berkeley resumed his regular attendance of the House, taking his seat at the opening of the new session. He was thereafter present on 81 per cent of all sitting days. At the end of April Ormond requested that Berkeley return to Ireland to resume his duties in Connaught, which Berkeley refused to do; once again he suggested that his nephew be allowed to deputize for him. Towards the end of June Bennet and Ormond were corresponding about the unsuitability of the post being held by deputy, with Bennet assuring Ormond that the king now had the matter in consideration. By the beginning of July Ormond was demanding that Berkeley be replaced. He was told by Clarendon that Berkeley would never part with the office ‘but for a valuable consideration’; Clarendon, nevertheless, solemnly pledged to do what he could.50 Word of the lord chancellor’s politicking perhaps filtered through to Berkeley, and on 13 July he voted, no doubt with considerable pleasure, in support of the unsuccessful attempt mounted by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Clarendon. On 22 July, perhaps reflecting his perennial interest in trade, Berkeley was added to the committee for the herring fishery bill.

Berkeley had been loath to fall out with Ormond, having complained in June that Daniel O’Neill‡, an associate of Ormond’s, had done him ‘ill offices’ to the duke. Berkeley took care to notify Ormond of the prorogation of Parliament on 28 July, and his wish that members of both Houses ‘will return [as] men with their wanted zeal and affection to his Majesty’s service improved’ expressed a further hint to Ormond that his political responsibilities in England must take precedence over those in Ireland.51 Four days before the close of the session Berkeley had shown solidarity with like-minded high Anglican peers, including his patron York, in subscribing the protest against a proposed amendment to the Act of Uniformity which would have helped to make the measure more acceptable to nonconformists. Although the king may well have instructed his privy councillors, of whom Berkeley was one, to assist in ameliorating the severity of the act, Berkeley enjoyed the luxury of being unfettered by any such constraint on his actions through the protection of his close association with the king’s brother. He may also have relished taking a further swipe at Clarendon, who was still exploring options for moderating the laws against Presbyterians.

Berkeley did not return to Ireland after the close of business in July 1663. He had been sworn a member of the privy council in June and could now insist that not only had his presence in London become imperative, but that his appointment gave Ireland an additional voice at the council table. Ormond probably did not welcome his input, complaining in a letter of July how he had been unable to ‘soothe him [Berkeley] in his belief of his infallibility’.52 Berkeley became a regular participant in deliberations on Irish business, but his comments were not always calculated to support the lord lieutenant’s administration. In May 1664 Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey, felt compelled to warn Ormond that Berkeley was broadcasting his opinion that ‘the army of Ireland was so rotten and bad that the king could have no assurance of them’, but that Ormond had refused to sanction the ejection of ‘dangerous men’ from Berkeley’s own troop.53

Berkeley’s almost daily attendance in the Lords during the session of March-May 1664 and continuing high level of attendance in that of November 1664-March 1665 was devoid, it seems, of noteworthy occurrence. Only weeks after the end of the latter session, as war loomed with the Dutch, he was telling Pepys of the urgent need for a recall of Parliament in order to meet the government’s serious shortage of money. He proposed a general excise, or a toll levied on every ‘city incorporate’, similar to the payments made annually by towns and cities on the continent.54 Shortly before Parliament assembled once more at Oxford in the autumn of 1665, he wrote optimistically to Ormond reporting news of the Dutch fleet being dispersed by a storm. This, he hoped, would prove auspicious for the new session.55 When Parliament did reconvene in October, it was not the financial crisis which roused him from his customary silence in the House, but Ireland and Ormond’s conduct. At the second reading of the Irish cattle bill in the Lords a forceful case against it was made with reference to Ormond’s achievements in Ireland by one of the duke’s old Irish adherents, James Tuchet, 13th Baron Audley (3rd earl of Castlehaven [I]). Berkeley joined in eulogizing the duke. Edward Conway, 3rd Viscount (later earl of) Conway, reported afterwards to Ormond that he ‘was very cordial and zealous … he doth not often speak in the House, yet he did acquaint them with the contents of a letter lately received from your Grace, for which he expects your thanks’.56 As a result of this onslaught, the cattle bill was dropped for the time being. Another success of the session was the passage of the bill for granting £120,000 to York. Shortly before the end of the year Berkeley was one of the duke’s officials to order payment of £10 to James Noble and the other doorkeepers of the House of Lords as a gift following the bill’s passage.57

The matter of the lord presidency of Connaught was finally settled in the spring of 1666 with the appointment of a resident Irish peer, John King, Baron Kingston [I], as ‘joint-president’ with Berkeley.58 The arrangement was evidently advantageous to Berkeley, for after the latter’s death in 1678 Kingston’s brother complained to the English treasury that whereas Kingston had borne the ‘charge’ of the presidency, Berkeley had ‘reaped the profit’.59 In April Berkeley was appointed one of the triers of Thomas Parker, 15th Baron Morley. He found with the majority and concluded that Morley was guilty of manslaughter.60

Berkeley took his seat in the new session on 18 Sept. 1666 after which he proceeded to attend on 81 per cent of all sitting days. On 23 Jan. 1667, he registered his dissent over the bill to establish a court of judicature to handle property disputes in the aftermath of the Fire of London, complaining that plaintiffs at law were to be denied adequate rights of appeal to the king and the House of Lords. This was of course wholly in keeping with his all-round contempt for lawyers and their engrossment of judicial power, particularly at the expense of the Lords.61

In the summer of 1667 he shouldered at his own expense the command of the militia forces in East Anglia that had been mustered to thwart the Dutch forces upon their landing in Suffolk. The reality was less than impressive. Berkeley was able to raise few militiamen, while Pepys thought his ‘young hectors’ were more eager to ‘debauch the countrywomen thereabouts’.62 It was hardly surprising that he was angered a few months later on hearing of accusations in the Commons from Sir Edward Spragge‡ that the Dutch had been greatly assisted by the dilatoriness of the ordnance chiefs, of whom Berkeley was one.63 In the opening weeks of the next session, he was conspicuous in the impeachment proceedings against Clarendon. Prior to the opening it had been reported that Berkeley was one of those ‘not a little pleased’ at Clarendon’s disgrace.64 By the time Parliament convened he appears to have taken on the mantle of one of Clarendon’s chief tormentors: Conway informed Ormond on 5 Nov. that Berkeley was acting as the disgraced lord chancellor’s ‘grand prosecutor’. On the 20th he and other peers registered a protest, signifying their agreement with the Commons’ wish that Clarendon be committed.65 Not satisfied with taking a lead in the public proceedings, Berkeley also seems to have been keen to destroy Clarendon’s reputation with his former friends. Towards the end of the year, Clarendon’s heir, Henry Hyde, styled Viscount Cornbury (later 2nd earl of Clarendon) complained that Berkeley ‘very industriously spreads abroad a rumour’ that Ormond had broken off all ties with the disgraced lord chancellor. Ormond was at pains to assure Cornbury that there was no truth in it and that Berkeley ‘could have no ground for the report’.66

In the midst of the assault on Clarendon, it was reported that both Berkeley and his wife had laid down their offices in the York household. On 21 Nov. the rumour was corrected. Lady Berkeley, the duchess’s groom of the stole, it was said, had resigned her position (worth £1,000 p.a.) but Berkeley had yet to quit his old patron. A newsletter some days later offered a further explanation that the duchess of York ‘had in great anger turned away’ Lady Berkeley, presumably in response to Berkeley’s prominent role in attacking the duchess’s father.67 Perhaps significantly, not long before this when the House ordered a deputation of peers to wait on the indisposed York to enquire after his health, Berkeley was one of those nominated but it fell to another to report the effect of the meeting.

Alongside his efforts against Clarendon, Berkeley was also one of those named as commissioners to negotiate a commercial treaty with the French.68 The early months of 1668 also found Berkeley taken up with a personal disagreement. On 10 Feb. the House was informed that one of his servants (Richard Harris) had been arrested at the suit of John Seldon. The following month Philip Harris informed the Lords that he had served their order on Seldon to appear at the bar, but that Seldon had ‘slighted’ the summons and ‘pished of it’ and had yet to appear to explain himself. Towards the end of April it fell to Berkeley to demonstrate his charity towards Seldon, by now a prisoner of the serjeant of arms. Berkeley interceded on Seldon’s behalf and secured his release.

Berkeley attended the three prorogation days of 11 Aug. 1668, 10 Nov. and 1 Mar. 1669. In August he received the king and his entourage at his country estate at Twickenham Park, which had been purchased the previous year.69 He had also commissioned a palatial residence in Piccadilly, subsequently known as Berkeley House, on which work had begun in 1665 and which was completed in 1672 at a total cost, it was reckoned, of £30,000. John Evelyn, who in later years acted as Berkeley’s man of business, wrote that it was an ostentatious Palladian showpiece of bad, if not the worst, conception: ‘there are no water closets, all are rooms of state’.70 This expenditure on property and building underlines the rate at which Berkeley accumulated his immense wealth during the 1660s. As early as 1663 he had boasted that he had made £50,000 since the Restoration, and it is clear that this was no idle exaggeration.71

During the course of 1669 Berkeley’s relations with the York household continued to fracture as he became increasingly associated with George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. Although Berkeley was not involved in the duke’s factional intrigues, their association had certain common elements at its heart. Their military background was one of these, but more immediate was their mutual hatred of Clarendon, and dislike of Arlington. In March Berkeley’s name was mentioned as a possible treasury commissioner (a gain for Buckingham over York). That autumn it was reported that he had been put out of a place in York’s household thought to have been worth £600 a year. This may well have been the comptrollership, which he had held since 1652.72

Lord lieutenant of Ireland and after, 1670-75

Shortly before news of his discomfiture circulated, Berkeley returned to the House at the opening of the new session on 19 Oct. 1669, after which he was present on all bar one of its sitting days. He was present once more at the opening of the subsequent session on 14 Feb. 1670 but attended just 32 days before leaving. The reason for his sudden departure was a renewal of responsibilities in Ireland. Berkeley had begun to feature as a member of the subcommittee of the Privy Council directed ‘to retrench the charge of Ireland’ in 1668, a role which early in 1670 led to his appointment to the premier Irish office itself, the lord lieutenancy.73

Berkeley’s appointment to Ireland through Buckingham’s agency had been discoursed as early as March 1668. By the autumn of that year Berkeley was himself talked of openly as one of those jostling for the place and by January 1670 his imminent appointment was publicly acknowledged, though there was some confusion as to whether he was to go as lord lieutenant or merely as a deputy.74 In February it was reported that Berkeley had received £3,000 ‘advance money’. Buckingham’s long-serving henchman Sir Ellis (or Elisha) Leighton, who it was suggested was ‘generally reputed a papist’ accompanied Berkeley to Ireland as his secretary. Leighton remained closely associated with Berkeley over the next few years. 75

Berkeley finally set out for Ireland early in April 1670.76 His term of office began well enough as he pursued the safe expedient of seeking ‘popularity on the duke of Ormond’s account’.77 In accordance with his instructions, he found no difficulty in maintaining the pro-Catholic policy of his predecessor John Robartes, 2nd Baron Robartes, but was unable to avoid a course that by the end of 1671 had caused him to alienate all shades of Catholic opinion. His efforts to deal with Ireland’s epic fiscal problems were equally ill-fated, as he found himself undercut by reckless counter-interventions by the king.78 He was also early on embroiled in disputes with Thomas Windsor, 7th Baron Windsor (later earl of Plymouth), over the abduction of Windsor’s niece, an Irish heiress, in which Berkeley appears to have colluded, and also over Berkeley’s apparent failure to honour a promise whereby Windsor was to have a military command in Ireland. In June 1671 it was reported that Windsor had sent Berkeley (at that point back in England) a challenge for the affronts but the result was a spell in the Tower for Windsor after Berkeley complained to the king.79 Although the king stood by Berkeley on this occasion, in December the lord lieutenant was said to have been chid for taking the part of disgruntled Irish soldiers and by January 1672 Charles had decided to replace him.80 Even so it was not until April that he was recalled. His appointment was formally revoked in May, but he did not return to England until August.81

Back at court Berkeley was unable to avoid a backlash from his term of office. He had quarrelled bitterly over religious policy with the Irish lord chancellor, Michael Boyle, archbishop of Dublin, who now furnished Arlington with reports which appeared to amplify earlier (and plausible) accusations against Berkeley of financial misconduct.82 Roger Boyle‡, earl of Orrery [I], formerly a well-wisher to Berkeley, but whose military power Berkeley had attempted to curtail in Ireland, had lost no time in aspersing him to court friends such as Conway.83 Moreover, the rapid success in Irish administration of Berkeley’s successor, Arthur Capell, earl of Essex, not only cast a shadow over Berkeley’s competence but, ironically, resulted in his being made to share in the fate which the ministers in London had decided upon in order to reduce Orrery’s troublesome sway in Ireland. In August 1672 Orrery’s office of president of Munster was formally abolished, and before the end of the year moves were afoot to do away with the parallel suzerainty exercised by Berkeley over Connaught.84 Berkeley’s loss of this immensely lucrative source of income may have been made to seem administratively necessary following the dismantling of Orrery’s jurisdiction, but it is likely that it was done at Arlington’s instigation, as an act of hostility towards Berkeley. For several months Berkeley endeavoured to make the surrender of his patent conditional upon an assurance that he would receive an income commensurate with the proceeds of his former office.85 Such an assurance was not forthcoming. It was an indication of how thoroughly Berkeley’s reputation in certain areas of Ireland was tarnished that in September 1674, when it was rumoured that Berkeley may be about to stage a return to the province, Lord Kingston noted that the news was ‘hot and terrible to this part of Ireland. I pray God avert that judgment’. The rumours persisted but Berkeley attempted to put an end to them by letting it be known at the beginning of 1675 that it would not be ‘convenient for him’. He remained, nevertheless, one of those believed to be responsible for attempting to destabilize Ormond at every turn.86

Berkeley’s departure for Ireland in April 1670 had occurred a few days before Parliament was adjourned until October that year. He entrusted his proxy to Richard Sackville, 5th earl of Dorset, but on two subsequent occasions when the House was called over, on 14 Nov. 1670 and on 10 Feb. 1671, he was excused as being on the king’s service. He resumed attendance at Westminster at the opening of the next session early in February 1673, and was present at every sitting bar three until the adjournment at the end of the following month. At the beginning of March he chaired a committee on a bill concerning the estate of one of his deceased distant relations, Sir Robert Berkeley‡ (d.1656). He chaired and reported two further bills on 25 and 26 Mar., one enabling the king to make leases from the duchy of Cornwall lands, the other for rebuilding the navy office and other property destroyed in the Great Fire of London.87 Berkeley’s assistance in getting these minor court measures on to the statute books during the busy final days of the session was evidently intended to give some demonstration of his continuing attachment to the court in the face of the hostility shown him by several of its senior figures. A little earlier in the session, according to Burnet, he and the duke of Buckingham not only aligned themselves with the lord treasurer, Thomas Clifford, Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, and John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale [S] (earl of Guilford), in urging the king to stand his ground over the Declaration of Indulgence, but also offered to the king that ‘if he would bring the army to town, they would take out of both houses of Parliament the members that made the opposition’.88

Berkeley was present on each day of the session of January and February 1674. Having attended the prorogation day on 10 Nov. he then returned to the House at the opening of the subsequent session on 13 Apr. 1675. Again his attendance was high, at just under three-quarters of all sitting days. In spite of his earlier attachment to Buckingham, he was forecast in April 1675 as a supporter of the lord treasurer’s (Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby, later duke of Leeds) controversial proposal for a ‘non-resisting test’. On 15 May, though Berkeley was not noted as present, the House was informed of a breach of his privilege relating to a court case that had been brought against one of his servants in the Michaelmas term of 1673. The case was referred to the committee for privileges.

French embassy and death, 1675-7

Berkeley took his place once more on the opening day of the next session, 13 Oct. 1675, but attended just five days before quitting the Lords, presumably to prepare for his forthcoming embassy to France. His departure was then delayed by a serious bout of poor health, Evelyn reporting how he had collapsed while on the way to a council meeting with a suspected fit of apoplexy. Initial reports of his death proved mistaken but the doctors were then divided on the most suitable treatment for him: some advocating bleeding, Dr. Fraser a vomit. The latter prevailed. Subsequent gossip that the episode had rendered him unfit to undertake the embassy were hushed by threats of being proceeded against for scandalum magnatum.89 This fresh instance of royal favour emboldened him to petition the king to continue his Irish pension of £1,200 p.a. for the duration of his wife’s life, a request perhaps prompted by his recent brush with death.90

It is not clear precisely when Berkeley finally set out for France but on 20 Nov. it was noted that his proxy had been wielded by John Frescheville, Baron Frescheville, in the division on the address to the king for a dissolution of Parliament (voting against the motion).91 Berkeley was in Paris by the middle of December. The Venetian envoy noted that he enjoyed the ‘complete confidence’ of the king and that fears that his age and ill health might not be conducive to rapid progress in negotiations were offset by the presence of Leighton as his secretary, ‘a man of great abilities’. Berkeley’s tenure of the post proved controversial. During his time away it was reported that his wife had converted to Catholicism. He also proved as eager for a return on his services as ever. In December he sought assurance that he would be recompensed for the costs he was undergoing; he repeated the request in March 1676, and in April he addressed the king directly asking somewhat testily for prompt payment of his ambassadorial expenses reminding Charles, not for the first time, of his many years of service to the Crown. An account drawn up in June revealed that he had already received over £6,000 but was demanding an additional £4,000 for extraordinaries and to cover his travelling expenses.92 Berkeley also demonstrated his habitual pompous pride in his station. He was reported to have received both Francis Seymour, 5th duke of Somerset, and Charles Talbot, 12th earl (later duke) of Shrewsbury, sitting and with his hat on. When Shrewsbury mimicked his behaviour Berkeley informed the younger man that he had affronted him. Shrewsbury replied in kind, underscoring that in England he was a better man than Berkeley (a mere baron).93 In October he proceeded to the peace congress at Nimeguen. Although Berkeley led the English delegation, the lion’s share of the work was borne by another of the plenipotentiaries, Sir Leoline Jenkins‡.

As preparations were made for a new parliamentary session early in 1677 Berkeley was prompted by Secretary Sir Henry Coventry‡ towards the end of December 1676 to nominate a proxy ‘that may have the same zeal and real intentions for his service as you have’; once again he chose Frescheville, who had also briefly acted for him around the time of his departure for Paris, though when asked, Frescheville claimed to know nothing about it.94 By May 1677, with Berkeley’s health beginning to fail, he returned home.95

During the remaining year or so of his life Berkeley was preoccupied by the condition of the English nation: his old prejudices reawakened by his favourable observations of government and society in France. He committed his thoughts to paper in an unpublished tract, ‘A Treatise about Government’.96 Addressing the possibility of war in the near future, he contrasted France’s social and economic bias towards ‘military virtue’ with England’s manifest inability to confront the French in their bid for ‘universal monarchy’ in Europe. He blamed the nature of England’s constitution, and in particular, the dominating power of the ‘body of the law’. Although he also struck a passing blow at the Church, much of his paper was given over to an attack on lawyers and the manner in which their insidious activities had gradually demolished most of the ‘props and supports of the prerogative royal’. He was perplexed that judges had invaded ‘all the judicial power of the House of Lords by declaring with much confidence and little truth … that they are only a court of appeals’, and that through the connivance of lawyer peers the method of proceeding there was so circumscribed that ‘none but madmen will appeal’. Berkeley was evidently conscious that his days were drawing to a close and that these pages would stand as a personal testament. In his opening lines he was unable to refrain from the sort of self-seeking artifice that Clarendon had seen him use so often, of condemning those in power on account of the ‘unequal dealing’ he had received from them, while at the same time professing himself ‘of a temper that would rather receive many injuries than do one’.

Berkeley was sufficiently well to attend the Lords for a few days in March 1678. The previous month it had been noted that he was one of those to have been ‘ousted from the possession of lands in the fen’ following a decree of sewers.97 Having taken his place on 4 Mar. he was present for ten days, just under nine per cent of the whole. He was then present on just three days of the subsequent session, attending for the final time on 27 May. He died at Twickenham a few months later on 26 Aug. and was buried at the nearby parish church on 5 September. The barony and estates were inherited by his eldest son, Charles Berkeley, 2nd Baron Berkeley of Stratton, and subsequently in turn by his two other surviving sons, John Berkeley, and William Berkeley, 3rd and 4th Barons respectively. His daughter, Anne, married a Suffolk squire, Sir Dudley Cullum‡.

A.A.H./R.D.E.E.

  • 1 Clarendon’s Four Portraits ed. R. Ollard, 108.
  • 2 Add. 38141, f. 39.
  • 3 TNA, PROB 11/358.
  • 4 HMC Pepys, 219.
  • 5 Add. 36916, f. 117.
  • 6 J.M. Collinge, Navy Bd. Officials, 1660-1832, p. 86.
  • 7 Pepys Diary, vi. 7; HEHL, EL 8456.
  • 8 CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 355.
  • 9 CSP Dom. 1664-5, p. 173.
  • 10 HMC Hastings, iv. 125; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p, 110; 1673, p. 430-1.
  • 11 H. Tomlinson, Guns and Government, 223.
  • 12 CTB, 1667-8, p. 232; 1669-72, p. 385.
  • 13 HMC Ormonde, i. 241; CSP Dom. 1673, p. 431.
  • 14 CSP Dom. 1667, pp. 167, 396.
  • 15 CSP Col. 1661-8, p. 125; 1669-74, p. 124.
  • 16 Add. Ch. 13585; CSP Col. 1661-8, p. 476.
  • 17 The Origins of Empire ed. Canny, 355, 357.
  • 18 Sel. Charters ed. Carr, 173, 179, 182.
  • 19 Evelyn Diary, iv. 23.
  • 20 Clarendon’s Four Portraits, 23, 107, 108; TNA, PRO 31/3/107, p. 136.
  • 21 Clarendon’s Four Portraits, 24-5, 26-35, 36, 117-98.
  • 22 Ibid. 38-40, 119-20.
  • 23 Nicholas Pprs. iv. 54.
  • 24 CCSP, iii. 360; iv. 177.
  • 25 Nicholas Pprs. ii. 15; CCSP, iv. 175; Bodl. Carte 30, f. 566.
  • 26 Clarendon’s Four Portraits, 120.
  • 27 Samuel Pepys’ Naval Minutes (Navy Recs. Soc. lx), 257.
  • 28 R. Hutton, Charles II, 143.
  • 29 Pepys Diary, v. 336.
  • 30 Clarendon’s Four Portraits, 122.
  • 31 Pepys Diary, vi. 38.
  • 32 BL, Sloane 3828, ff. 81-91.
  • 33 Pepys Diary, iv. 416.
  • 34 Bodl. Clarendon 79, f. 194; Pepys Diary, ix. 319.
  • 35 Clarendon’s Four Portraits, 120-1; HMC Hastings, iv. 125; CSP Dom. 1673, pp. 430-1; 1675-6, pp. 356-7.
  • 36 CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 122.
  • 37 Clarendon’s Four Portraits, 121.
  • 38 Add. Ch. 13585; CSP Col. 1661-8, p. 476.
  • 39 CSP Col. 1661-8, pp. 125, 133, 152; HMC Lords, n.s. vi. 406-7.
  • 40 CSP Col. 1669-74, pp. 60, 124.
  • 41 Origins of Empire, 355, 357; CSP Col. 1675-6, p. 151.
  • 42 Bodl. Carte 34, f. 464; Clarendon’s Four Portraits, 121.
  • 43 TNA, PRO 31/3/107, pp. 110ff, 136ff.
  • 44 Ibid. 31/3/108, pp. 58-63, 96-98.
  • 45 PH, xxxii. 250.
  • 46 CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 72, 301.
  • 47 TNA, PRO 31/3/110, pp. 179, 181-2, 187-9, 256-7; Bodl. Carte 217, f. 462, Carte 133, pp. 10-13.
  • 48 HMC Ormonde, n.s. i. 241, 244, 253, 256; CCSP, v. 275, 280; Bodl. Carte 217, f. 469.
  • 49 Bodl. Carte 49, f. 151.
  • 50 Bodl. Carte 174, 189, 684, Carte 221, f. 56.
  • 51 Bodl. Carte 32, ff. 625, 734.
  • 52 Ibid. 49, f. 222.
  • 53 HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 113, 117, 167.
  • 54 Pepys Diary, vi. 69.
  • 55 Bodl. Carte 215, f. 211.
  • 56 Ibid. 34, f. 464.
  • 57 BCM, gen. series 153, p. 10.
  • 58 Bodl. Carte 222, f. 90; HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 217.
  • 59 CSP Dom. 1678, p. 599.
  • 60 HEHL, EL 8398.
  • 61 Sloane, 3828, f. 86.
  • 62 CSP Dom. 1667, p. 167; 1675-6, pp. 356-7; Bodl. Carte 222, ff. 162-3, Tanner 45, f. 203; J. Callow, Making of King James II, 230; Pepys Diary, viii. 255.
  • 63 Pepys Diary, viii. 496.
  • 64 Eg. 2539, f. 112.
  • 65 Bodl. Carte 36, f. 25.
  • 66 Ibid. 147, pp. 12-13, 14.
  • 67 Verney ms mic. M636/22, Sir R. to E. Verney, 14, 21 Nov. 1667; Add. 36916, f. 27.
  • 68 TNA, PRO 31/3/116, p. 101.
  • 69 HMC Le Fleming, 66.
  • 70 Evelyn Diary, iii. 436, 624-5.
  • 71 Pepys Diary, iv. 331.
  • 72 TNA, PRO 31/3/121, p. 65; Add. 36916, f. 117.
  • 73 CTB, 1667-8, p. 232; Add 36916, f. 16.
  • 74 Bodl. Carte 36, f. 212, Carte 221, ff. 116-17, Carte 76, f. 19; Mapperton, Sandwich mss, journal vol. x. pp. 101-2; Bodl. ms Eng. Lett. c. 210, f. 125; Add. 36916, f. 162.
  • 75 Add. 36916, f. 164; NLS, ms 7007, ff. 152-3.
  • 76 Add. 36916, ff. 172, 174, 178-80.
  • 77 Add. 75359, Windsor to [Halifax], 9 Aug. 1670.
  • 78 Hutton, 268, 275, 281-2.
  • 79 HMC Rutland, ii. 19; Add. 75359, Windsor to Halifax, 9 Aug. 1670; Add. 36916, ff. 225-6; Durham UL, Cosin letter book 5b, n. 135.
  • 80 Verney ms mic. M636/24, Sir R. to E. Verney, 21 Dec. 1671.
  • 81 Add. 28040, f. 6; Hutton, 282; CSP Dom. 1671-2, p. 507; 1672, p. 455.
  • 82 CSP Dom. 1672, p. 615; 1672-3, pp. 74, 117.
  • 83 Hutton, 281.
  • 84 Ibid. 298; Stowe 200, f. 429.
  • 85 CSP Dom. 1673, pp. 430-1.
  • 86 Bodl. Carte 243, f. 144, Carte 72, f. 253, Carte 38, f. 238.
  • 87 PA, HL/PO/JO/1/3, pp. 14, 40, 41.
  • 88 Burnet, ii. 11.
  • 89 CSP Ven. 1673-5, pp. 459; Evelyn Diary, iv. 77; Verney ms mic. M636/28, W. Fall to Sir R. Verney, 28 Oct., 4 Nov. 1675.
  • 90 CSP Dom. 1675-6, pp. 356-7.
  • 91 HEHL, EL 8418.
  • 92 CSP Ven. 1673-5, p. 494; Verney ms mic. M636/29, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, 3 Apr. 1676; J. to Sir R. Verney, 6 Apr. 1676; Eg. 3326, ff. 1-2, 6-7, 8, 12-13.
  • 93 Verney ms mic. M636/29, W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 12 Apr. 1676.
  • 94 Add. 25119, ff. 76, 82.
  • 95 Evelyn Diary, iv. 110.
  • 96 Sloane 3828, ff. 81-91.
  • 97 HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, 99.