, one of the justices of the king’s bench in the time of Charles I.
, one of the justices of the
king’s bench in the time of Charles I. was born in 1584,
the second son of Rowland Berkeley, esq. of Spetchly in
Worcestershire, where his descendants yet live and was
by the female line, descended from Thomas Mowbray,
duke of Norfolk, who flourished in the reigns of Henry IV.
and V. In the 12 James I. he served the office of high
sheriff for the county of Worcester in the 3d Charles I.
was made king’s serjeant, and in the 8th of the same reign,
was made a justice of the court of king’s bench. While
in this office, he, with eleven of his brethren, gave his
opinion in favour of ship-money; and if we may judge
from the tenor of his conduct in private life, as well as
upbn the bench, from honest motives but as he had been
active on other occasions in what he seems to have thought
his duty, and was a man of fortune, he was singled out by
parliament as a proper object of their vengeance. He was
accordingly impeached of high treason, and adjudged to
pay a fine of 20,000l. to be deprived of his office of judge,
and rendered incapable of holding any place, or receiving
any honour in the state or commonwealth: he was also to
be imprisoned in the Tower during the pleasure of the
house of lords. Having made some “satisfaction
” for his
fine to the parliament, he was by their authority, discharged from the whole, and set at liberty, after he had
been upwards of seven months in the Tower. But he af
terwards suffered greatly by the plunderings and exactions
of the rebels, and a little before the battle of Worcester,
the Presbyterians, though engaged in the king’s service,
retained their ancient animosity against him, and burnt his
house at Spetchly to the ground. He afterwards converted the stables into a dwelling-house, and lived with content, and even dignity, upon the wreck of his fortune. He
was a true son of the church of England, and suffered more
from the seduction of his only son Thomas to the church of
Home, at Brussels, than from all the calamities of the civil
war. He died Aug. 5, 1656.