ROMANCE OF THE PEERAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8354, 6 September 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

ROMANCE OF THE PEERAGE.

A sew claimant has appeared to the Earldom of Berkeley, and his case will shortlj he heard by the t.'ommi too of Privileges of the House of Lords. There is an Earl of Berkeley already, but he enjoys little more than the ancient honour* of ' the house. The claim, however, will no doubt involve in some way or other a re-opening of the famous Berkeley Peerage Case, which was twice heard before the House of Lords in the early part of the present century. The Berkeley estates consisted of about '20,000 acres of rich land in Gloucestershire and two adjacent counties, and the ancestral seat of the family was the famous historic castle of Berkeley, where Edward 11. met with his horrid death, the grant having been made so far back as the reign of Henry 11. The barony dates from 1295, and the earldom from 1(579. On the death of the fifth Earl of Berkeley, 1810, his eldest son presented a petition to the Crown for a writ of summons as Karl of Berkeley, which was referred to the House of Lords, which came to the conclusion that the claim had not been substantiated. The fifth Earl had married a Miss Mary Cole, daughter of a butcher fit Wooten, near Gloucester, and the case chiefly turned on the question when he was first married to her. Beyond all doubt, on May 17, 1796, Frederick Augustus Berkeley, " bachelor," was married to Mary Cole, spinster," at -St. Mary's, Lambeth, by which time the said Mary Cole had borne the Earl several children, but it was alleged that an earlier marriage took place at Berkeley, in March, 1785, which had been kept secret. In 1733, at her father's death, Mary Cole came up to London to live with her sister, who was a. woman of loose character. A little while after she became a servant with a family in Kent, at _ the wages of £7 per annum. Then her sister sent for her back again. According to one account her sister was about being taken to prison for a debt of a hundred guineas, when Lord Berkeley came to the rescue, with the money in hand, and Mary Cole thenceforward became his mistress. She took the name of Miss Tudor, and lived in Park-street, Berkeley Square, whero half a dozen children were born, who were registered as the illegitimate offspring of Augustus Frederick Berkeley and Mary Cole. Lady Berkeley, however, alleged that she was all this time the lawful wife of Lord Berkeley, only the marriage had been secret on account of the light character of her sister. She always went by the name of Miss Tudor, and once when a servant addressed her as though she were a countess, the Earl reproved him for his blunder. The marriage register of Berkeley Church was produced, showing the entry of a marriage in March, 1785, the entry purporting to be made by a clergyman who had since died, and the witnesses to the marriage were Mary Colo's brother, then a boy of fifreen, who had signed himself *' William Tudor," and a man who never had an existence. William Tudor swore that he had heard the banns of the marriage published in church, but nobody elso appears to have heard them. The Solicitor-General in 1811 described the case as "a dreadful measure of perjury and guiltbut Mary Cole, afterwards Countess of Berkeley, always indignantly repudiated the charges of fraud made against her, and letters are now being published which she addressed to Lord Erskine, in which sho passionately protests her innocence. It was alleged at the time that, by repeated threats and importunities, she at last prevailed upon tho Earl to make her his wife, and that then she prevailed upon her husband to join her in a plot to legitimise her elder children by trumping up the story of a secret marriage at Berkeley. The proofs of this marriage, however, were insufficient to satisfy the llouso of Lords at the time when Mary Cole and her mother and brother were still living to bear witness on her behalf. Under the French law thcro would have been no difficulty, for it is always open to a man to legitimise his children by marrying their mother, even at the approach of death. The Earl of Berkeley did his utmost for his eldest son by Mary Cole by leaving him his estates, but had they been entailed he could not have offered this partial reparation for the c.. L inal wrong. If the Countess were indeed guilty it must be allowed as an extenuating circumstance that the English law as regards bastardy is harsh and cruel. The Earl of Berkeley, who had married Mary Colo, bequeathed the Berkeley estates to his eldest son, who in vain claimed the title. However, ho received, in 1831, a sort of consolation peerage, being called to the House of Lords by the title of Lord Segravo. Ho died unmarried in 1857, and his next brother succeeded to tho estates, and was subsequently created Lord Fitzhardinge. As the present Lord Fitzhardinge, son of tho first lord, now holds the Berkeley estates, Mary Cole, afterwards Countess of Berkeley, succeeded virtually in her object, although tho judgment of the Houso of Lords was against her first alleged marriage. Four sons were born to Lord Berkeley and Mary Colo prior to their marriage at Lambeth Church in 1796, and three afterwards. The eldest of the sons after the latter marriage was recognised as Earl of Berkeley, but ho never assumed the titlo ; his means were probably insufficient to support the dignity. On his death ho was succeeded by his cousin, a grandson of a younger brother of the earl whose romantic marriage connection had caused so much trouble in the family. His eon is the present Earl.