The Berkeleys and the Battle of Nibley Green

   In 1470, in the middle of the Wars of the Roses, that family squabble that tore England apart in the second half of the fifteenth century, the Berkeley family and a rival clan, the powerful Talbots, headed by the Earl of Warwick, fought their own private civil war.

    Like the Wars of the Roses, it was a dispute between cousins over succession and inheritance, and what was at stake was a huge amount of land and power. 

The battle painted from imagination by Graham Turner

To understand what happened at Nibley Green in 1470 we have to go back two generations, to the time of Thomas de Berkeley, 5th Lord Berkeley (1352/53 –1417), known as the Magnificent. He owned Berkeley Castle and much of the most valuable land in Gloucestershire. In 1367, in the reign of Edward III, Thomas married Margaret de Lisle, 3rd Baroness Lisle suo jure (1360–1392), daughter of Warine de Lisle, 2nd Baron Lisle (d.1382). The couple had no sons, only a daughter and sole heiress: Elizabeth de Lisle (c.1386-1422), Baroness Lisle suo jure. She married Richard, 13th Earl of Warwick, a great warrior in the Hundred Years War against France, who assumed ownership of Berkeley Castle in his wife's right.

    So long as the powerful Earl of Warwick was alive nobody challenged his ownership of Berkeley Castle. But after his death in 1459, the succession to the Berkeley estates became disputed.

    In 1463 William de Berkeley, the great-nephew of Thomas the Magnificent, inherited the title of Lord Berkeley, which could not pass through the female line, and William thought that he should get the castle with it. He had inherited some splendid estates through his mother, Isabel Mowbray, granddaughter of the Duke of Norfolk, but that did not content him. He asserted that Elizabeth de Lisle, being a woman, could not inherit Berkeley Castle and its extensive domains or bequeath them to her son, Thomas Talbot, now Viscount Lisle. 

     For seven years, the dispute was conducted through the courts, which was complicated and expensive. Eventually Lisle lost patience and challenged Berkeley to a duel, or a battle with retainers, to be fought at Nibley Green, near Berkeley Castle, on 20th March 1470.

    William was able to muster more supporters and retainers - some say as many as a thousand - while Lisle had only a few hundred, and he was decisively routed. Hit by two arrows in the face, he fell in the battle and his retainers scattered.

     Nibley Green is remembered as the last battle fought in England entirely between the private armies of feudal magnates. The battle was not quite the end of this dispute. Lisle's sister went on to marry Edward Grey, and he decided to revive the Lisle claim to Berkeley Castle, a claim supported by his sister-in-law, Edward IV's widow, Queen Elizabeth (Lady Grey). 

     William de Berkeley was formidable on the battlefield, but when off it was known for his haughtiness, his extravagance and his greed for ever higher titles. He was nicknamed "the Wass'all" i.e. the waste-all or wastrel.

    He paid Edward IV handsomely to be made Viscount Berkeley in 1481, then gave away 35 manors to Richard III in exchange for the title of Earl of Nottingham. How many more to be made Earl Marshall of England in 1486? 

   

 At the Battle of Bosworth Field, William changed sides, and decided to support Henry Tudor. In 1488 King Henry VII made William the 1st (and last) Marquess of Berkeley. This too was the result of a bargain. It was agreed that William, who had no children, would bequeath Berkeley Castle and all its attached lands to Henry VII and his male heirs. William had quarrelled with his younger brother, Maurice, and objected to him marrying a woman who was not nobly born. So on William's death in 1492 the castle passed to the Crown and most of the titles lapsed. 

     While the next generation of Berkeleys was still left with numerous other estates, it was a severe blow, and it would be more than half a century before Fate handed their ancestral stronghold and its domains back to their bloodline. 

https://www.tudorsociety.com/february-14-william-berkeley-marquess-of-berkeley/

https://murreyandblue.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/william-waste-all-berkeley-the-lord-who-out-stanleyed-the-stanleys-at-bosworth/

William “Waste-all” Berkeley, the lord who out-Stanleyed the Stanleys at Bosworth….! – murreyandblue https://share.google/3V3fWA92Y9Nd77LoShttps://share.google/3V3fWA92Y9Nd77LoS