3048480 - Davis Moebus Tree

Name Suffix:<NSFX> 8th Lord Berkeley
From: The History of Berkeley, http://www.rotwang.freeserve.co.uk/HistoryOfBerkeley/Chapter03.html

Chapter III.
The Murder of Edward II.
"Mark the year and mark the night,
when Severn shall re-echo with affright,
The shrieks of death through Berkeley's roofs that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing King!"
Gray's Bard.

Thomas III. Eigth Lord. 1326 to 1361
"THOMAS de Berkeley and his brother Maurice had shared with their father in the rebellion against the Despensers, and when the father was captured and committed to Wallingford Castle, the sons revenged themselves by laying waste the manors of the favourites in Oxon and Berkshire. Thomas was however taken prisoner and committed to the Tower, but made his escape; being again captured he was sent successively to the castles of Berkhampstead and Pevensey, and remained a prisoner nearly five years, until he was set free by the success of the Queen's party in 1326.
During the last six years of the reign of Edward II, it is recorded that half the baronage of England were butchered, imprisoned, or banished by the king in the course of the struggle against the king's favourites. The popular party was however now reinforced by the Queen Isabella and the Prince of Wales, who were everywhere welcomed as the deliverers of the kingdom. Their first acts were to liberate those of their friends who were pining in the king's dungeons, one of the first of whom was Thomas de Berkeley. He joined the Queen's army at Oxford, from whence they marched to Gloucester, and thence by way of Berkeley to Bristol. On the plea of preparing to receive the Queen, Thomas, now lord Berkeley, his father having died a few months previously, hurried forward to Berkeley, and proceeded to victual the Castle as if for a siege. This was his first appearance at Berkeley as its lord, and his tenants welcomed him with presents of money, from twenty to forty shillings each, according to their holdings.
The Castle and manors having been for several years in the possession of the Crown, lord Berkeley found them well stocked with cattle, hay, corn and implements, of which he took possession, as well as of a quantity of treasure of the Despensers which he found in the Castle. A great number of men at arms had also been levied and armed from the Berkeley manors by order of the King, and these now gladly gave their allegiance to their rightful lord.
At Bristol the elder Despenser was taken and executed as a traitor, and his son soon shared a similar fate at Hereford. The unhappy king, now deserted by all his friends, was captured near Neath Abbey in South Wales and sent to Kenilworth Castle, and the Queen and her army marched to London. From Hereford lord Berkeley however returned to Berkeley, halting on the way at Wigmore the seat of his father-in-law the lord Mortimer, where he met his wife the lady Margaret, from whom his long imprisonment and the turbulent events which followed it, had separated him for nearly six years. The king was formally deposed at a parliament which was summoned in January 1327, and remained a prisoner at Kenilworth, Thomas lord Berkeley, Sir John Maltravers, and Sir Thomas de Gournay, being charged with his safe custody. Gournay and Maltravers who were his immediate gaolers removed him to Corfe Castle and thence to Bristol, from whence he was brought on Palm Sunday, April 15th 1327, to Berkeley Castle. Lord Berkeley courteously received the king, and seems to have treated him with kindness and consideration, but this did not please the Queen and her advisers, for letters were soon after sent to lord Berkeley commanding him to "use no familiarity with Edward the late King," but to deliver over the custody of him to Maltravers and Gournay. Perceiving what was intended, lord Berkeley withdrew with a heavy heart, to his manor house at Wotton-under-Edge. Gournay and Maltravers now treated their charge with the greatest cruelty and indignity, hoping thereby t