John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton

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John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton, holding his baton of office

John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton (1602 – 26 August 1678) of

Bruton branch of the Berkeley family. From 1648 he was closely associated with James, Duke of York (the future King James II), and rose to prominence, fortune, and fame. He and Sir George Carteret were the founders of the Province of New Jersey, a British colony in North America that would eventually become the U.S. state of New Jersey. The territorial designation of his title refers to his role at the Battle of Stratton, Cornwall, in 1643 at which the Royalists destroyed Parliament's field army in Devon and Cornwall
.

Origins

Berkeley was the second son of

Member of Parliament, by his wife Elizabeth Killigrew, a daughter of Sir William Killigrew of Hanworth. His eldest brother was Charles Berkeley, 2nd Viscount Fitzhardinge; his younger brother, Sir William Berkeley
, served as royal governor of the Colony of Virginia from 1642 to 1652 and again from 1660 to 1677.

Early life

John Berkeley was accredited ambassador from

Sir Thomas Roe, who had conducted negotiations between Gustavus Adolphus and the king of Poland. Berkeley returned from Sweden in July 1637. He had a commission in the army against the Scots in 1638 and was knighted at Berwick in that year. In 1640 he was returned to parliament for both Heytesbury and Reading, electing to retain his seat for the former place. Next year he was accused in parliament of complicity in the Army Plots, expelled from the house, and committed to the Tower of London; he was subsequently bailed by Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset and Henry Grey, 1st Earl of Stamford in the sum of £10,000, but the outbreak of hostilities prevented any further steps being taken.[1]

First English Civil War

Berkeley took a conspicuous part in the First English Civil War, supporting the royal cause. He became governor of Exeter, and general of the royalist forces in Devon.

In 1642 he joined the

Sir Ralph Hopton as lieutenant-general. The royalist forces defeated, in May 1643, the Earl of Stamford at the Battle of Stratton, with great loss of baggage and artillery, and pursued him as far as Wells
.

In this affair, Sir John distinguished himself and was now made commander-in-chief of all the royalist forces in Devon. He sat down before Exeter, into which the Earl of Stamford had withdrawn, and which was further defended by the fleet under Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick. Berkeley succeeded in maintaining a blockade, beating off the Earl of Warwick with a loss of three ships, and on 4 September 1643, the Earl of Stamford was compelled to surrender.[1]

In 1644, Berkeley was present at the baptism of

Sir William Waller's westward advance, but were badly beaten at the Battle of Cheriton near Alresford in Hampshire
on 29 March.

In April 1645, he superseded

Thomas Fairfax westward in the autumn of the year changed the aspect of affairs. In January 1646 Fairfax was able to concentrate on Exeter, which Berkeley was forced (13 April) to surrender, on honourable terms.[1]

Involvement in the Hampton Court escape

After the surrender of the royalist forces, Berkeley joined his kinsman,

John Ashburnham. The result was that a set of propositions emanating from the chiefs of the army were submitted to the king as a basis of reconciliation in July 1647. These the king scornfully rejected.[1]

Berkeley received the king's commands to attend him in his flight from

delinquent, he returned to Paris.[1]

In exile

In Paris, during the absence of

Sir Edward Hyde. Berkeley and Hyde became enemies.[1]

Between 1652 and 1655 Berkeley served under

Condé, and the Spaniards in Flanders, accompanying the Duke of York as a volunteer. When the Duke placed his sword at the disposal of Spain and crossed over into the Netherlands early in 1656, he was still accompanied by Berkeley. In the spring of the next year, he made a tour with the Duke through some of the principal cities of the Netherlands, took part in the campaigns of that and the following year, and at the request of the duke was raised to the peerage as Baron Berkeley "of Stratton in Cornwall", by a patent dated at Brussels 19 May 1658.[1]

After the Restoration

On the

Congress of Nijmegen then about to assemble, but bad health both delayed his departure for Nijmegen, which he finally reached in November 1676, and caused him to return the following May, before the conference finished.[1]

New Jersey interests

Berkeley's personal relationships with

Quakers because of the political difficulties between New York Governor Richard Nicolls, Carteret, and himself. This effectively split New Jersey into two colonies: East Jersey, belonging to Carteret, and West Jersey. The division remained until 1702 when West Jersey went bankrupt; the Crown
then took back and subsequently re-unified the colony.

Residences

Twickenham Park House

In 1665 he began building

Berkeley House, his palatial London townhouse in the Italian style, on the north side of Piccadilly, near St James's Palace in Westminster. It cost nearly £30,000 and was completed about 1673, upon Berkeley's return from Ireland. The expansive grounds, today in Mayfair in Central London, are commemorated by the street names Bruton Street, Bruton Place, Bruton Lane, Stratton Street, Berkeley Street and Berkeley Square. It was renamed Devonshire House after its purchase in 1697 by William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, and burned down in 1733 when replaced by a second Devonshire House. In 1668 Berkeley bought Twickenham Park in Middlesex
, near London.

Death and legacy

On 26 August 1678 John Berkeley died, aged seventy-two years. He was buried on 5 September in

St Mary's Church, Twickenham.[1] in which a memorial window commemorates him and his brother Sir William Berkeley.[2]

Although John Berkeley held many distinguished offices, some authorities assert that, at one time, he was under a cloud, in consequence of his being detected in the selling of offices, and other corrupt practices. Samuel Pepys speaks of him as being esteemed "a fortunate, though a passionate, and but weak man as to policy", and "the hottest, fiery man in discourse, without any cause", he ever saw. Berkeley was notorious for spinning incredible tales of his exploits; Clarendon wrote that through constant re-telling he may have come to believe them himself.

Family

Berkeley married Christian or Christiana Riccard, daughter of Sir Andrew Riccard, a wealthy London merchant, in the East India Company; she had already been married first to Sir John Geare, and subsequently (14 February 1659) to Henry Rich, Lord Kensington, son of Robert Rich, 5th Earl of Warwick. He left three sons, each of whom succeeded in his turn to the title, and one daughter, Anne, who married Sir Dudley Cullum, Bart., of Hanstead, Suffolk. The title became extinct in 1773.[1][3]

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Berkeley, John (d. 1678)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  2. ^ Warren M. Billings, Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia (2010), p. 268
  3. ^ "Person Page".

References

  • New Jersey Archives, First Series. Newark, NJ, 1880–1893., Vol. 1, p. 25.
  • Whitehead, William Adee, East Jersey under the proprietary governments. New York, New-Jersey Historical Society, 1846, p. 103.
  • Mills Lane, ed., General Oglethorpe's Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733–1743, (Savannah, 1975)
  • O'Callaghan, ed., Documents relating to the Colonial history of the State of New York, 1849–1851. Vol. 2, p. 599.
Political offices
Preceded by Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
1670–1672 		Succeeded by
Peerage of England
New creation Baron Berkeley of Stratton
1658–1678 		Succeeded by
Charles Berkeley
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