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INTRODUCTION 



THE fifth Earl of Berkeley had six sons by his wife Mary Cole, 

 but inasmuch as he failed to establish before the House of Lords 

 his marriage to her in 1785, of the six, only two, born after the 

 formal marriage ceremony had been gone through in 1796, could 

 be reckoned legitimate. Of these sons, the youngest was the 

 Honourable George Charles Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley, 

 born on 10th February 1800 the author of the following 

 Reminiscences. 



Presented by his godfather, the Prince Regent, with a com- 

 mission in the Coldstream Guards when he was only sixteen, 

 Grantley Berkeley afterwards kept a term or two at Corpus 

 Christi College, Oxford, and then went to the Military College 

 at Sandhurst. Retiring on half-pay after a very short service, 

 he married in 1824 Caroline Martha, daughter of Paul Benfield, 

 a wealthy East India trader, who perhaps is remembered only as 

 the subject of Burke's furious invective, when he denounced him 

 in his speech on the debts of the Nawab of the Carnatic as " a 

 criminal who long since ought to have fattened the region of 

 kites with his offal." 



After his marriage, Berkeley resided at Harrold Hall in 

 Buckinghamshire, devoting himself closely to field sports, as may 

 be seen from the following pages. That he was able to tear 

 himself away from country pursuits and enter public life, in 



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