“Mark the year and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright;
The shrieks of death through Berkeley’s roofs that ring—
Shrieks of an agonising king!”
“His crie,” writes Hollinshed, “did move many within the castell and town of Berkelei to compassion, plainelie hearing him utter a waileful noyse, as the tormentors were about to murder him; so that dyvers being awakened therebye (as they themselves confessed) prayed heartilie to God to receyve his soule, when they understode by his crie how the matter went.”[25] It is said that the monasteries of Bristol, Kingswood, and Malmesbury, refused to receive the body, which was ultimately buried at Gloucester, attended thereto, according to Fosbrooke, by the Berkeley family, his heart being put in a silver vessel.[26]
Various additions were made to Berkeley Castle by subsequent lords. Thomas, the eighth lord, in 1342, rebuilt the high tower on the north side of the Keep (then in a state of decay), at a cost of 108l. 3s. 1½d.; it was called “Thorpe’s Tower,” from the tenure of one Thorpe, who held his lands at Wanswell by the guard of it. “This lord also, at subsequent periods, built that portion beyond the keep on the north-east side, and gave to the castle its present shape and circumference.”
The records of the castle exhibit many singular and striking evidences of the peculiar customs and manners of the several ages through which it has passed. In 1250 the lord of Berkeley feasted with fish during Lent the convent and abbey of Gloucester;[27] in 1273 marl was first used as manure on the lands of Berkeley, which then let for sixpence per acre. Thomas, the sixteenth earl, was much given to hunting;[28] in 1550 he had a princely residence in Shoe Lane (then a fashionable quarter), and used to hunt daily in Gray’s Inn Fields and about Islington. In 1572, on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Berkeley, “27 stagges were slaine in one day,” much to the displeasure of the earl, who “sodainely and passionately” desparked the ground. The visit was supposed to have been contrived by the Earl of Leicester, in order to provoke Lord Berkeley, and thus “draw upon him the royal disfavour.”
The castle was the last place which held out against Cromwell; it was surrendered on the 26th September, 1645, the soldiers marching out without arms, the officers with arms.[29]
Bounded on the north by the churchyard and on the south by a bowling-green, bordered
with a yew-hedge clipped into fantastic forms and arcades by the gardener’s art, a small embattled gate-lodge affords access to the outer court of Berkeley Castle. This court, having on its south side the beautiful park scenery, and in front of the spectator the fine and massive walls of the Keep, with the Thorpe Tower bearing on its summit the Berkeley banner, forms a picture of true baronial grandeur. The inner gateway still retains the groove of its portcullis, and is flanked on either side by cannon taken from St. Jean d’Acre during its siege by the Hon. Captain Berkeley, when commanding the Thunderer. Over the archway is a state-room, from which a narrow winding passage, cut in the thickness of the wall, affords a communication with the keep.
Emerging from the gateway, the visitor enters a quadrangle formed by the buildings erected by the eighth Lord Berkeley, the keep, and the tower said to have been the scene of the unfortunate Edward II.’s murder. Crossing the quadrangle, the hall is entered by an open porch having a doorway of singular form. The hall has lost many of its ancient features, but is still a very fine apartment, sixty-one feet in length, thirty-two feet six inches in breadth, and of the same height. At the entrance end is the minstrels’ gallery, with doorways under leading to the steward’s room and buttery-hatch, and at the opposite extremity is the dais, raised two steps from the floor. Large and deeply recessed windows on the sides give light to the apartment, and from the upper end the staircase is entered, which affords access to the principal apartments. In the chapel is an eagle lettern, supporting a Bible of the date of 1640; there is also a cast of the face of Charles I., and a fragment of Roman sculpture. The drawing-room, dining-room, breakfast-room, music-room, and the several other chambers, are all well “fitted up,” and contain some family portraits and pictures of a good but not superlative class of art. Many articles of furniture, of the time of Elizabeth and James, are interspersed throughout the rooms, among which may be named a handsome bed in the little state-room, and another in the room said to have been occupied by Queen Elizabeth. There is also a room called Admiral Drake’s room, containing a bedstead, chairs, and wash-hand-stand of ebony, all of which were used by him during his voyage round the world.
The objects of more peculiar interest, however, in this noble building are the apartments connected with Edward II.’s imprisonment and tragical fate; viz. the Dungeon-Room, and the chamber adopted by general tradition as the scene of his murder. A passage by the side of the former receives light from the window which opens into the court, and this passage also affords communication with a small room which may have been a guard-chamber; but the Dungeon-Room is itself without light, and a trap-door in the floor discloses when opened a darksome, dry well, sunk down some nine or ten yards. It has been asserted that the