Sir Maurice Berkeley

  General Notes:

MAURICE, the late lord's brother, now stripped of the ancient honours and possessions of his forefathers, (though he continued through his life to be styled by courtesy Lord Berkeley,) resided, as has been stated, at Thornbury, where, of his own and his wife's, he had a fair estate.

As soon as the inquisitions after his brother's death were returned into Chancery, Maurice commenced proceedings to recover from the Crown some of the manors which the Marquess had given away, being advised that such alienations were illegal, and contrary to some old settlements and entails. In these litigations he was generally successful, the late Marquess, in his anxiety to barter his lands for honours and patronage, having often overlooked the nature of the titles by which he held them. Maurice's first success was the recovery of the manor of Sages in Slimbridge, consisting of seven tenements and 290 acres of land and he entered into possession and held his first court there in 1499. Many other similar suits followed, with like success, and while these were going on the manor and borough of Tetbury and several others descended to him as one of the heirs of the Lord Breouse. In 1505 he claimed and recovered the advowson of the Church of Wotton-under-Edge but immediately made it over to the Abbey of Tewkesbury. He also commenced a suit to recover the advowson of Slimbridge, held by Magdalen College, Oxford which was settled by a compromise. The College retaining the advowson but paying him a sum of money and undertaking to remember him in their prayers.

In his journeys to and from London, and when visiting his manor of Callowden, near Coventry, finding that he and his suite were not received at the Monastery of Combe, in Warwickshire with the honour and respect due to him as descendant from one of its founders, Maurice exhibited a bill in Chancery against the Abbot and Monks, claiming his rights in respect of his descent from Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, their founder and obtained an acknowledgement of his claim.

Maurice died in 1506 and was buried in the Church of the Augustine Friars, in London. His eldest son, Maurice, succeeded him.
⁴⁷⁰

Maurice married Isabel Meade in 1465.²² (Isabel Meade died on 29 May 1514.)