Maurice de Berkeley, 2nd Baron Berkeley

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maurice de Berkeley's funerary monument in Bristol Cathedral

Maurice de Berkeley, 2nd Baron Berkeley , called the Magnaminous , (* April 1271 , † May 31, 1326 in Wallingford Castle ) was an English nobleman and rebel.

Origin and early political activity

Maurice de Berkeley came from the Berkeley family , who were among the most influential families in Gloucestershire and the southern Welsh Marches in the 13th and 14th centuries . He was a son of Thomas de Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley and his wife Joan de Ferrers . While his father was still alive, Maurice, like his father, was invited to parliaments by writ of summons from 1295 onwards . There is no evidence that he actually attended a parliamentary assembly during his father's lifetime. Thomas de Berkeley did not die until 1321, but from 1308 Maurice was considered Baron Berkeley in his own right. In 1308 he took part in the coronation of Edward II .

Military service

From 1295 Berkeley took part in several campaigns to Scotland during the Scottish War of Independence . Through his father, who was not only a crown vassal , but also a vassal of Aymer de Valence, 2nd Earl of Pembroke , Maurice de Berkeley came into the service of Pembroke. In 1297 he swore allegiance to Pembroke, and in 1297, 1298, 1299 and 1308 he was part of its military retinue in the wars in France and Scotland. The influential Pembroke rewarded Berkeley's services by placing him in charge of the city of Gloucester in 1312 . In the wake of Pembroke, Berkeley took part in the Battle of Bannockburn in June 1314 . Unlike his father and his own sons Thomas and Maurice, who were captured in Scotland, Berkeley escaped with a large retinue of Welsh foot soldiers. On April 18, 1315 he was appointed commander of the garrison of Berwick , one of the most important border towns with Scotland, for one year . But he found the garrison in such bad shape that he informed the king in September that he would soon have to evacuate the city without money for the wages and without supplies of food. The following winter Berkeley reported to the King several times about the bad situation in Berwick. Nevertheless, Berkeley was able to repel a Scottish attack under King Robert Bruce on January 7, 1316 . After a year, Berkeley was replaced as commandant of Berwick and instead appointed justiciar of South Wales through the influence of Pembroke in June 1316 . In this capacity he besieged Bristol in July 1316, along with Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and John Charlton , whose citizens rebelled against Bartholomew de Badlesmere , the commander of Bristol Castle . After a week-long siege, the city surrendered on July 26th.

Coat of arms of Maurice de Berkeley, which he used during his father's lifetime

A futile claim to part of the Clare legacy

In December 1314, Berkeley's first wife had died. In 1316 or 1317 he married Isabel de Clare, who was over fifty years old , a daughter of Gilbert de Clare, 3rd Earl of Gloucester from his first marriage to Alice de Lusignan . She brought her estates of Bromsgrove and Norton in Worcestershire and Stanley in Gloucestershire with her, from which she had about £ 100 a year in income. In 1307 her half-brother Gilbert de Clare, 4th Earl of Gloucester, gave her the goods of Shipton and Burford in Oxfordshire as well as income from other rights. It was probably not only these goods that had moved Berkeley to this marriage, but above all the hope of receiving a share of the Clare inheritance. Isabel's half-brother, the 4th Earl of Gloucester, had died childless at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and now the rich inheritance was to be divided among his sisters. However, Isabel's father had signed a contract with the king's daughter Johanna when he married the second time after his children from his first marriage, i.e. Isabel and her sister Joan , were excluded from the inheritance. Apparently, Berkeley now believed that exclusion from inheritance was illegal. He probably expected the Earl of Pembroke to support his view. On the one hand, Pembroke was related to Isabel de Clare through her mother and, on the other hand, the long-time feudal lord and thus a protector of the Berkeley family, and at that time he had considerable influence on the royal court. However, Pembroke adhered strictly to contracts that had been concluded, which is why Isabel was excluded from the inheritance for him. In November 1317, the Clare inheritance was divided among Isabel's three half-sisters, all married to royal favorites, while Berkeley's claim was disregarded.

Feud against the Earl of Pembroke

After the Earl of Pembroke did not support Berkeley's claim to part of the Clare inheritance, Berkeley apparently wanted revenge on Pembroke. Berkeley had been dismissed as Justiciar of South Wales in October 1317 after Roger Mortimer of Chirk had received this lucrative office at the instigation of Pembroke . While Pembroke was negotiating with the Earl of Lancaster on behalf of the King in Central England , Maurice and his brother Thomas, along with several other members of the family and other supporters, including the royal knight Thomas Gurney , John Maltravers the Younger and other men, attacked on December 31 July 13th, 1318 the hunting grounds of Pembrokes Manor Painswick in Gloucestershire, where the attackers wreaked havoc. Pembroke turned to King Edward II, who on August 8 appointed four royal judges to investigate the case. However, the influential Berkeley family took every opportunity to prevent or delay the trial. On December 30, 1318, Pembroke complained to the royal chancellor John Hotham that nothing had happened in the case so far. Thereupon Pembroke was assured on January 11, 1319 that he would receive compensation from the possessions of the responsible culprits, and on January 14 a new judicial commission was appointed. That commission quickly named 22 of the attackers, and on April 18, 30 additional people were named as allegedly involved in the attack. In addition to Maurice and Thomas Berkeley, these included other members of the family such as Thomas de Berkeley of Beoly and Robert de Berkeley of Arlingham . Although between June 21 and July 3, 1319, John Aymot , Pembroke's attorney, summoned the Berkeleys to nine meetings to settle the dispute, neither the Berkeleys nor their followers showed up on any of these meetings. Thereupon the sheriff of Gloucestershire invited the Berkeleys on the orders of the judges until October 1319 to four court dates, to which they also did not appear. As a result, Maurice and his brother Thomas were ostracized on October 1st. The judges could not pronounce punishment for the Berkeleys on November 5th because all the coroners of Gloucestershire had been captured by Thomas and Maurice de Berkeley, by John Maltravers or by Thomas de Gurney. The judges then instructed the sheriff to summon the accused to Lechlade on February 20, 1319 . On that date the Berkeleys and their supporters showed up, but they denied any involvement in the Painswick attack. Then a jury made up of residents of Painswick was supposed to find out the truth, but the residents had been so intimidated by the Berkeleys that the sheriff was unable to assemble a jury by July 1320 despite five attempts. Although the judges tried at least until August 1320 to clear up the attack on Painswick, the case remained unsuccessful. In the meantime, some of the attackers, in direct negotiations with Pembroke, granted Pembroke compensation because they allegedly had contacts with the attackers. In this way, Maurice and Thomas de Berkeley promised to pay Pembroke £ 150 in February 1320. With this and other payments, Pembroke got at least part of its damages after a long legal battle. The good relationship between the Berkeley and Pembroke was destroyed.

Follower of Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and participation in the Despenser War

Instead, Maurice de Berkeley belonged from 1318 to the retinue of the mighty Marcher Lord Roger Mortimer of Wigmore. This connection was strengthened in May 1319 when his son Thomas de Berkeley married Mortimer's daughter Margaret . In February 1320 the king appointed Berkeley Seneschal of Gascony . Whether Berkeley assumed this office is unclear, because in the spring of 1321 he belonged, like Roger Mortimer, to the Marcher Lords who plundered the possessions of the hated royal favorite Hugh le Despenser in the Despenser War . Berkeley must have participated in the attack in its own interest, because Despenser, as the husband of one of his wife's half-sisters, had received Glamorgan and other possessions from the Clare inheritance. After the attack on the Despenser estates, Berkeley attended the meeting at Sherburn-in-Elmet , at which the Earl of Lancaster tried to ally the northern English barons with the Marcher Lords. Like the other Marcher Lords, Berkeley was pardoned by the king for his offenses in the summer of 1321, but from the fall of 1321 the king took military action against the rebels. After Roger Mortimer had to surrender to the king in January 1322, Berkeley and Hugh Audley the Elder also surrendered in Gloucester after February 6th. The king gave his property to the younger despenser.

Wallingford Castle, where Berkeley died in captivity, was destroyed during the English Civil War in the 17th century

Captivity and death

While Roger Mortimer was imprisoned in the Tower of London , Maurice de Berkeley and Hugh Audley were taken to Wallingford Castle . There, in January 1323, friends and vassals of his tried to free him. Roger Wauton and other men visited the prisoner under a pretext . They invited the castle commander to dinner and overwhelmed him and the careless guards with weapons they had secretly smuggled into the castle. Then they let twenty other followers of Berkeley into the castle. But a boy from the castle managed to alert the mayor of Wallingford town . This then blocked Berkeley and his supporters in the castle and alerted the king. The Earl of Kent and the Earl of Winchester then besieged the castle until the conspirators surrendered around January 25th. They had fled to the church asylum in the castle chapel, where they were seized. Roger Wauton and two other conspirators were brought to the king, who had them executed by hanging. Perhaps the action was intended to prepare for the capture of the Earl of Winchester, who was nearby at the time, or it may even have been part of a major planned coup that will also occupy Windsor Castle and the Tower of London and the prisoners there, including Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, should be freed. Berkeley died in captivity a few months before Roger Mortimer of Wigmore landed with an army in England and overthrew the rule of Edward II and the two Despensers.

Family and offspring

Berkeley's first marriage in 1289 was Eva la Zouche († 1314), a daughter of Eudo de la Zouche and his wife Millicent de Cauntelo . He had several children with her, including:

  1. ⚭ Robert de Clifford, 3rd Baron Clifford
  2. ⚭ Thomas de Musgrave, 1st Baron Musgrave

His second marriage to Isabel de Clare was childless.

After the fall of Edward II, Berkeley's eldest son, Thomas de Berkeley, got his father's property and title back. Maurice de Berkeley was buried in Bristol Abbey . Roger Mortimer handed the overthrown king into Thomas de Berkeley's care, in which he was then probably murdered.

literature

  • John Roland Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, 1307-1324. Baronial politics in the reign of Edward II. Clarendon, Oxford 1972, ISBN 0-19-822359-5 .
  • (John Roland) Seymour Phillips: Edward II . New Haven, Yale University Press 2010. ISBN 978-0-300-15657-7 .
  • Natalie Fryde: The tyranny and fall of Edward II, 1321-1326 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003. ISBN 0-521-54806-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ian Mortimer: The greatest traitor. The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, Ruler of England, 1327-1330. Pimlico, London 2003, ISBN 0-7126-9715-2 , p. 23.
  2. ↑ JR Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence , p. 261.
  3. ↑ JR Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence , p. 52.
  4. ↑ JR Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence , p. 74
  5. ^ Seymour Phillips: Edward II , p. 250.
  6. ↑ John Robert Maddicott: Thomas of Lancaster, 1307-1322. A Study in the Reign of Edward II. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1970, p. 162.
  7. ↑ JR Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence , p. 91.
  8. ↑ John Robert Maddicott: Thomas of Lancaster, 1307-1322. A Study in the Reign of Edward II. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1970, p. 184.
  9. ↑ JR Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence , p. 263.
  10. ↑ Natalie Fryde: The tyranny and fall of Edward II, 1321-1326 , p. 41.
  11. ↑ JR Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence , p. 264.
  12. ↑ JR Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence , p. 261.
  13. ↑ JR Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence , p. 262.
  14. ↑ JR Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence , p. 265.
  15. ↑ JR Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence , p. 266.
  16. ^ Seymour Phillips: Edward II , p. 360.
  17. ^ Seymour Phillips: Edward II , p. 355.
  18. ^ Ian Mortimer: The greatest traitor. The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer , p. 105.
  19. ↑ Natalie Fryde: The tyranny and fall of Edward II, 1321-1326 , p. 41.
  20. ↑ John Robert Maddicott: Thomas of Lancaster, 1307-1322. A Study in the Reign of Edward II. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1970, p. 271.
  21. ^ Ian Mortimer: The greatest traitor. The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer , p. 110.
  22. ^ Natalie Fryde: The tyranny and fall of Edward II, 1321-1326 , p. 55.
  23. ↑ Alison Weir: Isabella. She-Wolf of France, Queen of England . London, Pimlico 2006, ISBN 0-7126-4194-7 , p. 138.
  24. ^ Seymour Phillips: Edward II , p. 413.
  25. ^ Natalie Fryde: The tyranny and fall of Edward II, 1321-1326 , p. 156.
  26. ^ Seymour Phillips: Edward II , p. 439.
  27. ^ Natalie Fryde: The tyranny and fall of Edward II, 1321-1326 , p. 157.
  28. ^ Seymour Phillips: Edward II , p. 440.
  29. ^ Natalie Fryde: The tyranny and fall of Edward II, 1321-1326 , p. 63.
  30. ^ Bristol Cathedral: History and heritage - Elder Lady Chapel. Retrieved September 5, 2018 .
  31. ↑ JR Seymour Phillips: Aymer de Valence , p. 266.
predecessor Office successor
Thomas de Berkeley Baron Berkeley
1321-1326 		Thomas de Berkeley
personal data
SURNAME De Berkeley, Maurice, 2nd Baron Berkeley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maurice the Magnaminous
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English nobleman and rebel
DATE OF BIRTH April 1271
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1326
Place of death Wallingford Castle