John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton

John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton (1602 – 26 August 1678) of Berkeley House in Westminster and of Twickenham Park in Middlesex, was an English royalist soldier, politician and diplomat, of the 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 Sir Maurice Berkeley of Bruton Abbey in the parish of Bruton, Somerset, a member of the landed gentry and a 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 Charles I of England to Christina of Sweden, in January 1637, to propose a joint effort by the two sovereigns for the reinstatement of the elector palatine in his dominions; probably the employment of Berkeley in this by his cousin, 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.

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 Marquess of Hertford at Sherborne, and was sent into Cornwall with the rank of commissary-general to act under 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.

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.

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