VOL. XVIII. (2) EXCURSION— WOTTON-UNDER-EDGE 121 



Warwick, and Lord Berkeley then obtained possession of the Castle. Taking 

 advantage, however, of the accession of the boy king, Henry VI., the strife 

 became renewed with violence, even to the destruction of certain portions of 

 the town of Berkeley. By an arbitration arrived at in 1426, Lord Warwick 

 was allowed to retain Coaley, Symond's Hall, and Wotton, together with 

 Lisle House. Lord Berkeley was now knighted, and was living at Berkeley ; 

 and there his wife, Isabel, daughter of Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, 

 gave birth to William de Berkeley, Lord Berkeley (1463-92), the subsequent 

 victor of Nibley Green, 20th March, 1469-70. 



After the death of Warwick, at Rouen, in 1439, the hereditary quarrel 

 was renewed on the part of his three daughters and co-heiresses, and especially 

 by Margaret, the eldest of these, then second wife of John Talbot, Lord Talbot, 

 presently first Earl of Shrewsbury, by whom she had a son, John, Viscount 

 (de) Lisle. In 1452, Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury, contrived to capture 

 the person of Isabel, Lady Berkeley, while in Gloucester, when preparing her 

 appeal to the King in Council, on behalf of her lord, and closely imprisoned 

 her so that she died Sept. 27th, and was buried in the Church of the Francis- 

 cans there. 



The Talbots were in their own rights, of much power in the County, 

 being the Lords of Painswick, the largest Manor therein, as well as of 

 Moreton Valence, and Whaddon. But though Lord Talbot had been oc- 

 cupied chiefly with the war in France at this period, his son Lord Lisle had 

 experienced some " shrewd brushes " with Lord Berkeley, who in turn had 

 attacked and plundered Lisle House, where the Countess of Shrewsbury 

 was then living. Lord Lisle also had his revenge, and he managed to break 

 into the Castle at Berkeley, and there he carried off Lord Berkeley and his 

 sons, whom he retained, probably at Lisle House, for eleven weeks. 



In 1452, the great Talbot and his son, then Lord Lisle, fell together at 

 Chastillon. These events may have lulled, they did not quell, the im- 

 placability of the now widowed Countess of Shrewsbury, who presently 

 became the Custodian of her grandson, Thomas Talbot, now 2nd Viscount 

 Lisle, the ill-fated heir to all this tragical doing, and who had been born in 

 1450, to his father and to Joan, daughter and lieiress of Sir Thomas Cheddar 

 (of Cheddar, Co. Somerset). 



Lord Berkeley now married (July 25tli, 1457), incredible as it sounds, 

 a step-daughter of the same Countess, in the person of Joan, daughter of the 

 Earl of Shrewsbury by his first wife, a daughter of Thomas Nevill, Lord 

 Furnival. Possibly, this marriage helped to bring about their reconciliation 

 of 1463 (Oct. 22nd), soon after which Lord Berkeley himself died, leaving 

 Lady Shrewsbury to face his son and heir, William, Lord Berkeley, aged 41, 

 to whose mother she had caused the miserable death in Gloucester Castle 

 twelve years before. It is certain that the Countess renewed the war upon 

 him, for he petitioned the Crown against her arrogant claims to his estates ; 

 but while the matter was impending, she died in June, 1468. 



The long and great quarrel, like some perilous mass of loosened rock 

 needing but a tremor of the earth to launch itself upon a path of devastation, 

 now needed but one fresh stimulus in order to bring matters to a supreme 

 decision. It was thenceforth no longer women and a man ; it was man 

 against man : young Lord Lisle against the mature William de Berkeley. 

 The famous fight does not need description again. There can be no doubt 

 that Lady Shrewsbury had educated her grandson in the way in which she 

 meant him to fight the cause of her family. Unfortunately, neither her 

 training, nor his own temper, not yet his youthfulness promised to favour 

 its issue in his hands ; although his craft was almost precocious in his en- 

 deavouring, albeit in vain, to bribe King, the porter at Berkeley, to deliver 

 up that Castle to him. His fury at King's refusal, perhaps, was the immediate 



