BERKELEY 123 the issue male, with the Castle, ^c, retained the dignitie of a Baron and hereofFhave the heires generall or next heires female beene excluded.' See Collins' Precedents, p. 113. The ' antient presidents ' quoted in support there- of are eleven, the case of Deyncourt, Baron of Blankney, 10 Edw. II, and that of the entail of the Castle of Berkeley, 23 Edw. Ill, being added to the nine (above given) quoted by Smyth; a similar mistake being made, under De la Warr, in giving the name ' Griffin ' as ' GrifFeth,' which coincidence is strongly suggestive of this being the source from which Smyth derived his precedents. In the case of Grey de Ruthin (1640) the precedents were adduced to prove that even ' where a Barony by writ falls into one sole heir general ' there have been cases where ' neither she nor her issue hath enjoyed the title or dignity of her ancestors ' and where ' the King hath disposed thereof at his pleasure, as, sometimes, to the issue of the half blood before the whole, sometimes to a mere stranger and [that] most times, if there hath been competition between the heir male and heir female, the heir male hath carried the honour, especially if the heir male hath the caput Baronize.' See Collins' Precedents, p. 225. The cases adduced in support thereof are nine, viz. (i) Burnell of Holgate (2) Ferrers of Groby (3) Walleron of Kilpeck (4) Deyncourt of Blankney (5) Delawarr (6) Berkeley (7) Ogle (all of which were adduced in the case of Bergavenny), to which are added those of (8) Bergavenny (itself), where the Castle, fsJ'c., of Abergavenny was entailed by will, 27 Hen. VIII, and of (9) Latimer, where the Barony was entailed by John (Nevill), Lord Latimer (who had inherited it ex parte maternd), on George Nevill, a cadet cousin ex parte paternd, which George was sum. accordingly by Henry VI, to the detriment of the h. gen., descended from the sister and sole h. of the entailor, such h. gen. being the h. of the previous Lords Latimer. From the similarity of these precedents with those adduced by Smyth there can be but little doubt that he derived them from the pleadings of 1 604, omitting (by accident) that of Deyncourt of Blankney. — It is moreover important to observe that Dugdale's account is evidently derived from Smyth's MSS., to which he had access, and that the petition of Lord Berkeley in 1661 was evidently based on Smyth's statements. Now, as even Cruise himself derived his facts from Dugdale, we arrive at the fact that all the mis-statements (as they apparently are) as to the precedency of such of the Lords Berkeley as were not possessed of the Castle, can be traced to the assertions made by Smyth who, of course, wrote with a strong party bias on behalf of his patrons, the Lords Berkeley." HOLDERS OF THE CASTLE, Wc, OF BERKELEY (») I. William I. i. Roger, styled "Senior," who, having, between (*) "The Earlier House of Berkeley," as here given, is taken from an elaborate treatise of that name by Sir Henry Barkly, G.C.M.G., in the Transactions of the Bristol and Glouc. Arch. Soc. (1883), vol. viii, p. 193, ^c, which corrects a former notice of them in that work (1881) by A. J. Ellis, entitled "the Domesday tenants in Gloucestershire," wherein the succession of this race is given from the first Roger through Eustace and IVilliam to the Roger who was dispossessed about 11 52.
