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and agrarian troubles. Sir John was a builder at Bisterne in 

 concert with Dr. John Prophete, the last Rector of Ringwood. 

 He built and endowed a chauntry attached to his Bisterne 

 residence about the year 1410, and the vaults under the present 

 Bisterne House may probably be of the same age. The chauntry 

 which stood at the southern end of the house has long since 

 vanished, probably in the Tudor Reformation era, when, we are 

 informed, the curate was a lunatic and the chauntry unserved. 

 Sir John Berkeley died in 1427 and was buried near his first wife 

 at Mere (see illustration), and Iris son, Sir Maurice Berkeley, the 

 reputed dragon-slayer, who had been made a knight during his 

 father's life, succeeded. Sir Maurice married Laura, daughter 

 of Lord Fitz Hugh, a member of the baronial House of Warwick. 

 This dragon legend, as written nearly three hundred years since 

 (1618), is as follows: — " Sir Morris Barkley, the son of Sir John 

 Barkley, being a man of great strength and courage.* In his time 

 there was bred in Hampshire, near Bisterne, a devouring dragon, 

 who, doing much mischief upon men and cattle, could not be 

 destroyed but spoiled many that attempted it, his den was near 

 a beacon. This Sir Morris Barkley, armed and encountered it, 

 and at length killed it, but he died himself soon after." The 

 record in Berkeley Castle assigns the date as 143 1. As naturalists, 

 we are not disposed to wholly reject this legend, but would suggest 

 that either a late specimen of some venomous reptile or else some 

 domestic animal, gone mad, would account for the real incident. 

 Where the dragon-slayer was buried is uncertain, but in the 

 chauntry at Mere is a shield with the arms of Bettsthorne quarter- 

 ing Berkeley and impaling Fitz Hugh, which belongs only to 

 this Sir Maurice, it may be that his remains lie near his parents 

 and grandparents. After the death of the first Sir Maurice, his 

 son, another Sir Maurice Berkeley, succeeded to the title and 

 estates. The second Sir Maurice was an attendant and partisan 

 of Edward IV. and married Anne West, a member of the family 

 associated with the erection of the Lady Chapel in Christchurch 

 Priory Church. This fact, and its linkages with the families of 

 Chidcock, Stourton, and West with the Berkeleys is the clue or 

 reason for the erection of the Berkeley chauntry in Christchurch 

 Priory Church. It was this Sir Maurice Berkeley who willed 

 the erection of the chauntry over his grave and that of his wife, 

 as already noticed, in 1474-5, but its erection was delayed 

 until the commencement of the Tudor dynasty by political in- 

 fluences. The last male heirs of this branch of the Berkeley 

 family died early in the 16th century, and parts of the estates 

 became the inheritance of Wyburga Brereton, as the daughter and 

 heiress of Catherine Berkeley. This lady married a Sir William 

 Compton, a courtier in attendance on King Henry VIII. The 

 Bisterne estates thenceforward became the property of the family 

 of Compton until near the end of the 18th Century, when they 

 were sold by Mr. Compton to Mr. Mills, the direct ancestor of 

 the present owner. 



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