BERKELEY is one of the most ancient of the manors of England; it is styled a royal demesne and free borough in Domesday Book, and, during the reign of Edward the Confessor, a religious house existed there for nuns. This, having been forfeited, was granted to the famous Earl Godwin; and a tradition still endures, that the crafty earl obtained it by corrupting the inmates of the nunnery, whose dissolute conduct he afterwards reported to the sovereign. By this wicked means he obtained their possessions; but his consort, Gueda, refused maintenance from lands thus acquired, and her lord assigned to her use the manor of Woodchester. The history of the castle is full of the deepest interest, from the Conquest to the close of the Civil War, and a few facts collected from the statements of its many historians cannot fail to be acceptable to our readers. William the Conqueror bestowed the manor on Roger, surnamed De Berkeley, one of the soldiers of his invading army: his grandson taking part with Stephen against Henry II., was deprived of his inheritance, which was given by the king to Robert Fitzhardinge, governor of Bristol, “a Dane of royal descent,” in reward for eminent services; and with the posterity of this renowned knight the manor has ever since remained.[24] By this Robert the castle is believed to have been founded, and of the original structure the Keep is undoubtedly a part. About the year 1186, the lord of Berkeley having occasion to widen the castle moat, trespassed a few feet on the churchyard, which had been granted by Robert Fitzhardinge to the abbey of St. Augustin at Bristol. Richard, the first abbot, indignant at this infringement of ecclesiastical rights, according to Fuller, “so persecuted him with church censures, that he made him in a manner cast the dirt of the ditch in his own face,” compelling him not only publicly to confess his fault, but to bestow upon the abbey a portion of land, “pro emendatione culpÆ suÆ.” About the middle of the thirteenth century the castle was strengthened and beautified by Maurice, lord of Berkeley, walks and gardens were formed around it, the course of a small river was changed for its convenience, and pools and ponds were made for fish. By Edward II. the castle was granted in succession to his favourites, Piers Gavestone and Hugh Spencer, but his rebellious queen at the head of her army restored it to its legitimate owner. Soon after this event, in 1327, the castle became the scene of a frightful tragedy—the murder of the king under circumstances of unparalleled atrocity. Edward, then imprisoned at Kenilworth, having been compelled to resign the crown in favour of his son, was transferred to the safer keeping of Berkeley Castle; but its lord manifesting proof of sympathy with the unhappy sovereign, his relentless queen, by the counsel of her paramour, Mortimer, placed in charge over him Sir Thomas Gournay and Sir John Maltravers, who had the custody of the royal prisoner “month about.” These men, taking advantage of the sickness of Berkeley, in whose custody the king then was, and while he was incapacitated from attending to his charge, entered the castle and took possession of the royal person. The very place where the act was committed is still preserved nearly intact; it is a detached and dismal chamber, then only lighted by arrow slits, situated over the steps which lead into the keep, and its appalling name of “The Dungeon Room,” is retained to this day. His murderers threw the king on his bed, and so perpetrated the murder as to avoid all external evidence of the cruel deed:—

“His crie,” writes Hollinshed, “did move many within the castell and town of Berkelei to compassion, plainelie hearing him utter a waileful noyse, as the tormentors were about to murder him; so that dyvers being awakened therebye (as they themselves confessed) prayed heartilie to God to receyve his soule, when they understode by his crie how the matter went.”[25] It is said that the monasteries of Bristol, Kingswood, and Malmesbury, refused to receive the body, which was ultimately buried at Gloucester, attended thereto, according to Fosbrooke, by the Berkeley family, his heart being put in a silver vessel.[26]

Various additions were made to Berkeley Castle by subsequent lords. Thomas, the eighth lord, in 1342, rebuilt the high tower on the north side of the Keep (then in a state of decay), at a cost of 108l. 3s. 1½d.; it was called “Thorpe’s Tower,” from the tenure of one Thorpe, who held his lands at Wanswell by the guard of it. “This lord also, at subsequent periods, built that portion beyond the keep on the north-east side, and gave to the castle its present shape and circumference.”

The records of the castle exhibit many singular and striking evidences of the peculiar customs and manners of the several ages through which it has passed. In 1250 the lord of Berkeley feasted with fish during Lent the convent and abbey of Gloucester;[27] in 1273 marl was first used as manure on the lands of Berkeley, which then let for sixpence per acre. Thomas, the sixteenth earl, was much given to hunting;[28] in 1550 he had a princely residence in Shoe Lane (then a fashionable quarter), and used to hunt daily in Gray’s Inn Fields and about Islington. In 1572, on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Berkeley, “27 stagges were slaine in one day,” much to the displeasure of the earl, who “sodainely and passionately” desparked the ground. The visit was supposed to have been contrived by the Earl of Leicester, in order to provoke Lord Berkeley, and thus “draw upon him the royal disfavour.”

The castle was the last place which held out against Cromwell; it was surrendered on the 26th September, 1645, the soldiers marching out without arms, the officers with arms.[29]

Bounded on the north by the churchyard and on the south by a bowling-green, bordered

with a yew-hedge clipped into fantastic forms and arcades by the gardener’s art, a small embattled gate-lodge affords access to the outer court of Berkeley Castle. This court, having on its south side the beautiful park scenery, and in front of the spectator the fine and massive walls of the Keep, with the Thorpe Tower bearing on its summit the Berkeley banner, forms a picture of true baronial grandeur. The inner gateway still retains the groove of its portcullis, and is flanked on either side by cannon taken from St. Jean d’Acre during its siege by the Hon. Captain Berkeley, when commanding the Thunderer. Over the archway is a state-room, from which a narrow winding passage, cut in the thickness of the wall, affords a communication with the keep.

Emerging from the gateway, the visitor enters a quadrangle formed by the buildings erected by the eighth Lord Berkeley, the keep, and the tower said to have been the scene of the unfortunate Edward II.’s murder. Crossing the quadrangle, the hall is entered by an open porch having a doorway of singular form. The hall has lost many of its ancient features, but is still a very fine apartment, sixty-one feet in length, thirty-two feet six inches in breadth, and of the same height. At the entrance end is the minstrels’ gallery, with doorways under leading to the steward’s room and buttery-hatch, and at the opposite extremity is the dais, raised two steps from the floor. Large and deeply recessed windows on the sides give light to the apartment, and from the upper end the staircase is entered, which affords access to the principal apartments. In the chapel is an eagle lettern, supporting a Bible of the date of 1640; there is also a cast of the face of Charles I., and a fragment of Roman sculpture. The drawing-room, dining-room, breakfast-room, music-room, and the several other chambers, are all well “fitted up,” and contain some family portraits and pictures of a good but not superlative class of art. Many articles of furniture, of the time of Elizabeth and James, are interspersed throughout the rooms, among which may be named a handsome bed in the little state-room, and another in the room said to have been occupied by Queen Elizabeth. There is also a room called Admiral Drake’s room, containing a bedstead, chairs, and wash-hand-stand of ebony, all of which were used by him during his voyage round the world.

The objects of more peculiar interest, however, in this noble building are the apartments connected with Edward II.’s imprisonment and tragical fate; viz. the Dungeon-Room, and the chamber adopted by general tradition as the scene of his murder. A passage by the side of the former receives light from the window which opens into the court, and this passage also affords communication with a small room which may have been a guard-chamber; but the Dungeon-Room is itself without light, and a trap-door in the floor discloses when opened a darksome, dry well, sunk down some nine or ten yards. It has been asserted that the

smell from dead carcases thrown into this well was one of the sources of annoyance to which the monarch was subjected, and this would seem to identify the room as his place of abode; but Hollinshed’s statement “that his crie was heard by many in the town of Berkelei,” is held as more applicable to the room adjoining the keep, which we now describe.[30]

To the left on entering the inner quadrangle, and attached to the Keep, is a square tower of two stories, and on a platform of four or five steps stands an early English arch, surmounted by a still earlier Norman label-moulding, attesting the antiquity of this tower. A flight of steps from thence gives access to the level of the base court of the keep. At the side of these steps a narrow gangway or gallery, protected by a rude and antique timber-shed roof, leads to a room of irregular form and small dimensions extending

over the staircase, lighted by two deeply recessed windows opening to the outer court, and secured by a strong oak door communicating with the before-named gallery.

An old chair, an old carved four-post bedstead, and in a most suspiciously recessed angular nook, an old black-looking pallet-bed, form the furniture of this room, all, though tattered and time-worn, bearing evidence of some former splendour in decoration. It does not require much stretch of imagination for the adoption of this chamber as the scene of

And a bust of the wretched king standing in one of the window recesses, with its face veiled in shadow, seems mutely but powerfully to appeal to

those feelings of pity which cannot fail to be excited by the view of this dreary abode of royalty.

Emerging into the open court, a highly enriched Norman archway is found, which forms the entrance into the courtyard of the keep, where, at some ten or twelve yards above the base-court, a number of wild ducks are quietly domiciled in a small pond formed in its centre, and where they have remained for some years contrary to their nature, apparently without a wish for change. From thence the ramparts are ascended, and a fine view is obtained of the surrounding country.

The Church is a fine early structure adjoining the castle, and attached to its south side is the mortuary chapel of the Berkeley family—a richly groined edifice, divided

into two compartments by a handsome stone screen, the inner or eastern apartment containing several monuments of the family. The altar end is blocked up by a fine Elizabethan tomb of Sir Henry Berkeley, who died in 1613; his first wife’s effigies are placed by his side. Under an arch, opening into the south side of the chancel, is a highly enriched and decorated altar-tomb, on which lie the effigies of another Earl of Berkeley and his son. It is a beautiful specimen of the period, divided into fourteen niches, having floriated canopies, under which are figures on pedestals—the Virgin and Child, St. Christopher with our Saviour, St. George and the dragon, and St. Peter, are among the number.

The groining of the chapel is curious, as containing in its several bosses and panels a connected set of emblems referring to the awful mystery of the Holy Trinity, with a most unaccountable interpolation of the monkish satires of the fox preaching to geese, a monkey holding a bottle, &c.

The churchyard contains a monument to the last of those privileged characters, the “fool” or jester of the nobility. He was in the employ of the Earl of Suffolk, and appears to have been lent to Lord Berkeley. He was buried 18th June, 1728. At the end of the monument are the arms of the earl, and on one side this inscription,—

On the opposite side are these lines written by Dean Swift, who was chaplain to Charles Earl of Berkeley:—

The village bears the half-maritime character usual in places near the sea, or an arm of

the sea, and has some old buildings about it, of which the annexed sketch is a specimen. It may, however, be justly celebrated as the birthplace of Dr. Jenner, by whom cowpock inocculation was first introduced. He was buried at Berkeley, and will ever be remembered with gratitude as the successful combatant of that fearful disease, whose ravages were so finely alluded to by Admiral Berkeley, when, advocating his claims in the House of Commons, he said, that “not a second is struck by the hand of Time but a victim is sacrificed at the altar of that most horrible of all disorders—the small-pox.”

Wandering through the ancient and venerable Halls, consecrated by time, the mind associates with every solemn nook some memorable passage of its eventful history. Ages have wrought comparatively little change in its external and internal aspect. There are no indications of ruin, and few even of neglect, in this famous baronial castle. The fancy is scarcely taxed to behold again, seated on the dais, its powerful lords—mirrors of chivalry: we seem almost to hear the minstrels recite the praises of descendants of the royal Dane, who fought and conquered by the side of the Conqueror; we behold his successors, in one unbroken line for centuries, surrounded by their vassals, holding regal sway; we tread the very steps which a deposed and death-doomed monarch trod in grievous captivity; and although we shudder at entering the dark chamber in which he was so foully murdered, we feel pity for, rather than anger towards, that “Lord of Berkeley” who was certainly guiltless of the deed, and whose weapon would have forced aside the hands of remorseless butchers. Berkeley Castle is a fine study for the antiquary; a full page for the historian: it illustrates with singular force the customs of our ancestors; exhibits their state of perpetual “watch and ward;” the frowning Keep speaks audibly; and every winding staircase and chamber, small or large, is fertile of story.

The neighbourhood, too, retains much of its primitive character. One may imagine the peasants and farmers, whose quaint homesteads environ the strong castle—the dependants and retainers of four centuries ago.

So few of these “old places” have been preserved to our time, “unimproved” by modern “taste,” that a visit to Berkeley is like a refreshing draught of pure water in an arid plain, to those who mourn over removals of the ancient landmarks of their ancestors.

“In surveying Berkeley Castle,”—we quote the fine apostrophe of Dallaway—“this proud monument of feudal splendour and magnificence, the very genius of chivalry seems to present himself amidst the venerable remains, with a sternness and majesty of air and feature which shew what he once has been, and a mixture of disdain for the degenerate posterity that robbed him of his honours. Amidst such a scene the manly exercises of knighthood recur to the imagination in their full pomp and solemnity; while every patriot feeling beats at the remembrance of the generous virtues which were nursed in those schools of fortitude, honour, courtesy, and wit—the mansions of our ancient nobility!”