Sir Maurice Berkeley

Sir Maurice Berkeley (by 1514–1581) of Bruton in Somerset and of Berkeley House, Clerkenwell, Middlesex, served as Chief Banner Bearer of England to Kings Henry VIII and Edward VI and to Queen Elizabeth I, and rose rapidly in the Tudor court. He came from a cadet branch of the great Berkeley family of Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, but in his career, his initial advantage was due to his mother's second marriage to Sir John FitzJames, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench 1526–1539, which by 1538 had brought him into the household of Thomas Cromwell, from which he passed into the royal household by 1539. He built a mansion house on the site of Bruton Priory in Somerset, which he acquired following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, incorporating some of the monastic buildings, but this was demolished in 1786. Sir Maurice's impressive Renaissance monument, with recumbent effigies of himself and his two wives, survives in the later rebuilt chancel of the Church of St Mary, Bruton. His descendants, known as "Berkeley of Bruton" included many notable figures until the 18th century, including five Barons Berkeley of Stratton (extinct in 1773), and four Viscount Fitzhardinges (extinct in 1712), as well as William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia. Today Berkeley Square, Berkeley Street, Bruton Street and Stratton Street in Mayfair cover the site of the demolished Berkeley House, their London townhouse. Portraits of himself and his second wife by Federico Zuccari (c.1540/1–1609), in England from 1574, survive at Berkeley Castle. Origins He was a younger son of Richard Berkeley of Stoke Gifford, in Gloucestershire, a descendant of Sir Maurice de Berkeley (1298–1347), of Uley, Gloucester, a younger son of Maurice de Berkeley, 2nd Baron Berkeley (d. 1326). This Sir Maurice, before being killed at the Siege of Calais in 1347, had acquired Stoke Gifford in 1337, and founded the line of Berkeley of Stoke Gifford. The branch's relation to the main Berkeley line was renewed by a marriage between the elder brother of the Tudor Sir Maurice and his remote cousin, the daughter of the Baron Berkeley at the time. Career Although he apparently never studied law at the Inns of Court, his stepfather Sir John FitzJames, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, got him a job "in the office of the Prothonotary of the Common Pleas", and by 1535 wanted to appoint him as clerk to his own circuit.