11 



be late in the 14th or early in the 15th century, and there 

 are additions by later hands. The book contains copies of 

 charters and donations to the Monastery of St. Augustine. 

 The headings of each are rubricated, and the initial letters 

 iUuminated,Vo^ably by two different hands. This is the Book 

 so often mentioned in Smythe's lives of the Berkeley Barons, 

 and which was missing from amongst the records of Berkeley 

 Castle for more than 50 years, having probably been stolen. It 

 was recovered at an auction, and restored to its proper owners 

 on the 24th Februaxy, 1804. There are also at Berkeley Castle 

 three MSS. copies of Smythe's Lives of the Berkeleys, one of 

 them in vellum, in three vols, folio, with copies of the Great 

 and Privy Seals, many of which are given in Lysons's 

 Antiquities of Gloucestershire, and in Dallaway's Heraldic 

 Enqviiries. 



Before leaving the Great Hall, Mr. Cooke read a paper on the 

 early history of Berkeley and its possessors. The first mention 

 of Berkeley is in the reign of Edward the Confessor, in the 

 celebrated Legend of the Witch of Berkeley, on which Sotjthey 

 wrote his well-known baUad. At that time the site of the 

 Castle was occupied by a wealthy nunnery, which about the 

 year 1043 fell into the clutches of the celebrated Earl Godwin 

 through a fraudulent artifice : but he seems to have held his 

 ill-gotten spoil for a very short time ; as he fell into disgrace, 

 and died about 1053. Edward the Confessor, after Godwin's 

 death, retained Berkeley, and granted it at a fee-farm rent 

 to EoGER Lord of Dijrsley. At the Conquest, Eoger was 

 permitted to hold it, and it remained in his family to near 

 the end of the reign of Stephen. During the contentions for 

 the crown between Stephen and the Empress Maud and her 

 son, afterwards Henry II, the Lord of Dursley, as a crown 

 vassal, supported his Sovereign, and upon the accession of 

 Henry was punished for his fidelity by being deprived of 

 Berkeley, which the King bestowed on Egbert the son of 

 Harding, who had been one of the principal adherents of the 

 Empress his mother. This Eobert was the founder and direct 

 ancestor of the present noble family of Berkeley, and the manor 



