Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 2.djvu/141

BERKELEY 125 merchant of Bristol, and of great wealth and influence, received from Henry of Anjou, in 1153 or ii54,(^) shortly before his accession as Henry II, a grant (among others) of the Castle and " herness " of Berkeley (as above mentioned) which was confirmed by the said Henry when King, probably in (i 1 55) the first year of his reign, (*") whereby he the said Robert (doubtless) became feudal LORD OF BERKELEY. In 1168 he enter- tained, at Bristol, Dermot Mac Murrough, King of Leinster, on his arrival to solicit succour from Henry II. He founded, in 1141, the Abbey of St. Augustine, at Bristol, of which he afterwards became a canon. He m. Eve.(') He d. 5 Feb. 1 170/1, aged about 75. His wife, who founded a priory of nuns on St. Michael's hill, Bristol, whereof she d. Prioress 12 Mar. 1 1 70, was bur. with her husband. V. 1 171. 2. Maurice FiTzRoBERT FitzHarding, o//^frw«f DE Berkeley, feudal Lord of Berkeley, s. and h., who "may bee called Maurice the Make Peace" b. about 1 120, in Bristol, received (at the same date as his father) a confirmation of the grant of Berkeley from Henry II, in 1155, and again 30 Oct. 1189 from Queen Eleanor, Regent to her son Richard I. In 1 190 he was Justice Itinerant in co. Gloucester. He enlarged the Castle of Berkeley, which thenceforth became the chief seat of, and gave the name to, the family. He w., in 11 53 or 11 54, at Bristolj('*) Alice, ist da. (but not h. or coh.) of his dispossessed predecessor, (*) He and his son Maurice received duplicate grants of Berkeley manor, is'c, from Duke Henry in 1153, and duplicate confirmations thereof from the same, soon after he became King. [Berkeley C/iarterSy edit. I. H. Jeayes, nos. 2, 3, 6, 7). A similar duplication occurs in the grants, made at the same time and place (Bristol), of Breteuil and Pacy, "et dapiferatum Anglie et Normannie" to Robert, Earl of Leicester, and to Robert, his son. See Leicester, Earldom of, under the ist Earl. [ex infirm. G. W. Watson). V.G. (*") "And this is that deed from which the Barony of Berkeley, and dignity of being a Baron or Peere of the Realme is derived, and from which ought to bee the precedency of the now Lord's place, for this grant was his very creation of Baron, and by it resulted to the said Lord Robert the dignity of a Baron, and to bee a Baron and Peere of ye Realme, viz. Baronem nobllitatii gradu ornatum, having by it regularly and originally the true essentialls of a Baron and Barony, viz. Jurisdiction and territory holden by Knight's service in capite both for civil and criminall causes; not being cr. a Baron by writt or patent but by tenure as afsd., which is the most noble and ancient of ye three kinds of Barons that are in this day." So writes the learned John Smyth of Nibley, in his Lives of the Berkeley's^ giving the Latin grant in extenso, in which (as may be gathered from his comment thereon) there is plenty to shew the right of the grantee as to the Lordship of the Manor, but nothing as to any his right to a Peerage of the realm. C^) She is alleged to have been sister of Durand, "da. of Sir Estmond, by Godiva, his wife, a pedigree which J. H. Round denounces as "obviously absurd." V.G. (^) Smyth says it was in the presence of King Stephen and of Henry, Duke of Normandy, but query at what time were they together at Bristol ? G.E.C. The contract itself, however, states merely that it was made " in domo Rodberti filii Hardingi apud Bristou in presentia domini Henrici ducis Normannorum et Aquitanie