Note 26 — BERKELEY CASTLE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.
Reading edition
The following notes are extracted from Smith’s “Lives of the Lord Berkeleys,” edited by Fosbrooke:—
“The accompt of William Aside, receiver to the Lord Berkeley, accomptinge for a year from Mmass. anno 20 of Edward II. to the same feast in the first of Edward III., sheweth that he received to this lord’s use 700l. de camera scaccarii domini regis, out of the receipt in the king’s exchequer, for the expences of the house of the king’s father whilest he was at Berkeley; and hath in his said accompt an allowance of 31s. 1d. paid by him to Sir Thomas de Gournay, sent to Nottingham from Berkeley by the said Lord Berkeley to advertize the queene and the king her sonne of the death of the late king his father there. And 15th May the same year an allowance of 500l. more from the kynge, paid him by John de Langton, keeper of the castle of Kerfilly, for the same cause.
“The accompts of the reeves (stewards) of Hame and Alkington, and of other manors of this lord’s, near Berkeley Castle, expressly shewe what provisions and acates they sent from their severall granges and manor-houses from the 5th day of Aprill, then being Palm Sunday, when at supper time the kinge was first brought prisoner to Berkeley Castle, untill his death there the 21st September following.
“And the accompt of this said lord’s receiver for the yeare following, in 2d Edward III., sheweth what he payd for dyinge of the white canvas into black, for coveringe of the chariot wherein the bodye of the king was carryed from Berkeley Castle to Gloucester; what the cords, the hors-collers, the traces, and other necessaries particularly cost, used about the said chariot and conveyinge of his body thence to Gloucester; for a silver vessell to put the king’s hart in 37s. 8d. (in uno vase argentes pro corde dicti Domini Regis patres reponend); in oblations at several times in the chapple of the Castle for the kinges soul, 21d.; in expenses of the Lord Berkeley’s family going with the kinges body from Berkeley unto Gloucester, 18s. 9d.; and many like particularities.”