♂James Berkeley

James Berkeley^W (about 1394 – November 1463) was an English knight and lord of Berkeley Castle^W, in Gloucestershire, who spent much of his life in a quarrel with his own cousins over the castle and its lands. He was the seventeenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Maurice Berkeley (about 1435–1506).

Early life

James was born at Raglan, in Monmouthshire, about 1394, the son and heir of Sir James Berkeley and Elizabeth Bluet, whose father, Sir John Bluet, held Raglan. His father, the next brother of Thomas, Lord Berkeley, died on 13 June 1405, when James was about eleven. His mother married again, to Sir William ap Thomas^W, and it was to this stepfather that James later sold Raglan, the place of his birth.

In April 1410, at sixteen, James was contracted in marriage to a daughter of Sir John St. John. In 1415 he married a daughter of Sir Humphrey Stafford, of Hooke, in Dorset, who died very young. Neither marriage left children, and in 1417 he owed his father-in-law £4,000.

The fight for Berkeley

When his uncle Thomas, Lord Berkeley, died in 1417 without a son, James was his heir male and claimed Berkeley Castle and other estates under an entail^W made by his great-grandfather. Thomas’s daughter Elizabeth, Countess of Warwick, claimed them as her father’s heir, and it took James some four years of dispute to get possession. In July 1421 the countess complained to the king’s council that her cousin had put armed soldiers and archers into the rectory house of her manor of Wotton-under-Edge to keep her out, and that his men fired arrows at her and shouted obscenities as she passed. That October he was summoned to Parliament as Lord Berkeley, and he was summoned until 1461. King Henry VI knighted him on 19 May 1426. The family’s later historian, John Smyth, wrote that he “may bee called James the Just.”

Marriage to Isabel Mowbray

In 1424 James married Isabel Mowbray, the widow of Sir Henry Ferrers and a daughter of Thomas Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk^W, and Elizabeth de Arundel. In 1425 the couple received a papal indult^W allowing them a portable altar, and they traveled together to Rome, where they stayed at the English Hospice. They had four sons, William, Maurice, James and Thomas, and four daughters, Isabel, Margaret, Elizabeth and Alice.

The quarrel over Berkeley outlived the Countess of Warwick. Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury^W, a granddaughter and co-heir of the last Lord Berkeley, took it up, and Isabel is said to have been arrested on her order while about to appeal to the king’s council on her husband’s behalf. She was imprisoned at Gloucester and died there on 27 September 1452, and was buried in the church of the Grey Friars at Gloucester.

Later life and death

In 1457 James married a fourth time. His bride, Joan Talbot, was a daughter of John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury^W, the countess’s husband; they had no children. On 22 October 1463 James made a deed of reconciliation with the countess, and within thirty-six days he was dead. He died at Berkeley Castle in November 1463 and was buried at Berkeley.

The family

Their eldest son, William^W, was born at Berkeley Castle in 1426 and as a boy was in the retinue of Cardinal Henry Beaufort^W at Calais about 1438. He succeeded his father as Lord Berkeley and was later made Marquess of Berkeley. He had no surviving children and settled the castle and most of the family lands on King Henry VII, so that his brother Maurice was cut out of the inheritance.

Notes

Sources

James’s birth, parents, marriages, the dispute with the Countess of Warwick and the complaint of July 1421, his summonses to Parliament, the papal indult of 1425, the stay in Rome, his children, Isabel’s arrest and death, and his own death and burial are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edition (2011), vol. 1, pp. 256–258. The Complete Peerage, 2nd edition, vol. 2 (1912), pp. 132–133, gives the same account and adds his father’s death date, his knighthood in 1426, John Smyth’s phrase “James the Just,” the death in infancy of his second wife, the circumstances of Isabel’s arrest, and the deed of reconciliation of 22 October 1463. The 1st edition, vol. 1 (1887), p. 321, says that he came into the Berkeley estate “after 4 years controversy”; vol. 6 (1895), p. 213, records the sale of Raglan to Sir William ap Thomas, whose first wife was Elizabeth Bluet, widow of Sir James Berkeley. William’s early career is from Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 74; his settlement of the family lands on the king is from the Complete Peerage, 1st edition, vol. 1, pp. 331–332. All of these are printed genealogies of the medieval nobility, drawing on Smyth’s Berkeley manuscripts, the patent rolls and the papal registers.

Dates and places

Richardson gives the marriage to Isabel as “in 1423/4,” a year that ran across the old New Year of 25 March; the Complete Peerage gives “(1423-24).” Richardson calls the manor where the archers were posted Wotton-sub-Edge, an old form of Wotton-under-Edge. Neither source gives a day for James’s death.

Which Lord Berkeley

Richardson numbers James the sixth Lord Berkeley, counting from the earlier lords of the castle. The Complete Peerage treats him as the first baron of a new barony created by his writ of summons of 1421, and suggests he owed that writ to holding Berkeley Castle under the entail; Wikipedia follows that numbering.

Joan Talbot’s mother

The Complete Peerage makes Joan a daughter of the earl’s first wife, Maud Nevill, and so a stepdaughter of the Countess of Shrewsbury. Richardson makes her a daughter of the countess herself, the earl’s second wife, Margaret Beauchamp.