He was a younger son of Richard Berkeley of Stoke Gifford, in Gloucestershire, a descendant of Sir Maurice de Berkeley, of Uley, Gloucester, a younger son of Maurice de Berkeley, 2nd Baron Berkeley. This Sir Maurice, before being killed at the Siege of Calais in 1347, had acquired Stoke Gifford in 1337, and founded the line of Berkeley of Stoke Gifford. The branch's relation to the main Berkeley line was renewed by a marriage between the elder brother of the Tudor Sir Maurice and his remote cousin the daughter of the Baron Berkeley at the time.
Career
Although he apparently never studied law at the Inns of Court, his stepfather Sir John FitzJames, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, got him a job "in the office of the Prothonotary of the Common Pleas", and by 1535 wanted to appoint him as clerk to his own circuit. But Cromwell wanted to place his own man in this role, and a deal seems to have been done. By 1537 at the latest he was a member of Thomas Cromwell's household and beginning to accumulate lands and money. He moved to the royal household a year before Cromwell's fall, and was a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King Henry VIII from 1539 to his death in 1547 and to his son King Edward VI until his death in 1553. With his background he was able to redirect his career into the military and commanded "a troop of light horse" in France in 1544 during the Italian War of 1542–46, being knighted on his return. He was appointed Constable of Berkeley Castle in 1544, and Chief Banner Bearer of England in 1545, succeeding his elder brother. He received New Year gifts from the queen in 1543 and 1544, and was bequeathed 200 marks in Henry VIII's will. He was a Protestant and kept a low profile during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary, resuming his rise under her Protestant successor Queen Elizabeth. He had signed the "device" settling the crown on Lady Jane Grey, but was pardoned, losing his position as banner bearer. When Wyatt's rebellion collapsed in 1554, it was Berkeley to whom Thomas Wyatt the Younger surrendered. He was a Member of Parliament for Somerset in 1547, 1563 and 1572 and for Bletchingley in March 1553. He was a Justice of the Peace in 1559 and served as Sheriff of Dorset and Sheriff of Somerset for 1567–68.
Builds Berkeley House
Shortly before his death he built Berkeley House in Clerkenwell, a brick-built mansion of H- or U-plan. Until the 1680s it was the residence of his very distant cousin George Berkeley, 1st Earl of Berkeley, 9th Baron Berkeley, following which the house was for a short time a centre of Roman Catholicism, under Father Maurus Corker, a Benedictine. Berkley Street was named after the House, but was later renamed Briset Street and in the early 1700s the site was built over with terraced housing.
*Henry Berkeley, a Member of Parliament for Somerset.;
Secondly in 1562 he married Elizabeth Sands, one of Queen Elizabeth's gentlewomen, the daughter of Anthony Sands of Throwley in Kent, by whom he had 2 further sons and a daughter. She died at Berkeley House, Clerkenwell, and was buried in that parish in the Church of St James, where she had a monument "comprising a stone altar-tomb, surmounted by Corinthian pillars, supporting a pediment: beneath the lattter lay a figure of her ladyship; in the costume of her time, the hands broken off and the head of a negro at her feet. Above was a coat of arms in relief, consisting of fifteen quarterings, but without crest or motto. The inscription ran thus":
