William Berkeley

“ That evening Sir William Berkeley was sitting in the private room at the tavern, which had been fitted up for his reception. He had strictly commanded his servants to deny admittance to any one who might wish to see him. The old man was tired of counsellors, advisers, and petitioners, who harassed him in their attempt to curb his impatient ire, and he was determined to act entirely for himself. He had thus been sitting for more than an hour, looking moodily into the fire, without even the officious Lady Frances to interfere with his reflections, when a servant in livery entered the room. ”

“ BERKELEY, CRAVEN FITZHARDINGE (1805–1855) , member of parliament for Cheltenham, seventh and youngest son and eleventh of the twelve children of Frederick Augustus, fifth earl of Berkeley, of Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, and of Mary, daughter of William Cole [see Berkeley, Family of] , was born in London, at Berkeley House, Spring Gardens, on 28 July 1805. During the early part of his career he was for a time an officer in the 1st life guards. Immediately after the passing of the Reform Bill, however, in 1832, a new path in life was marked out for him. Cheltenham, on 10 Dec. ”

“ Berkeley married secondly, on 27 Aug. 1845, Charlotte, fourth daughter of the late General Denzil Onslow, of Stoughton, Huntingdonshire, and widow of George Newton, Esq., of Croxton Park, Cambridgeshire.
The only surviving child of Craven Berkeley's first wife by her former husband, Miss Augusta Talbot, was nineteen in 1851. She was a ward in chancery, and on attaining her majority would come into possession of 80,000l. ”

“ Thomas Burnet kept the Charter House, in London, and his conscience—happier, perhaps, in this than if he had enjoyed the ecclesiastical preferment which King William seemed so anxious to give him. Amongst the clergy, Dr. Burnet was, with the single exception of Dean Swift, the greatest Freethinker of whom we can boast, who held an influential position in the Church. This position is sometimes claimed for Bishop Berkeley, a man of vast talents, a sincere Christian, although an innovator in philosophy. ”

“ Three years later, in 1874, he brought out his last work, 'Fact against Fiction,' 2 vols., in which the habits and treatment of animals were practically considered. The last years of Grantley Berkeley's life were embittered by the loss of his wife and their two sons. His wife, who was a catholic, died on 18 Feb. 1873. Swinburne Fitzhardinge Berkeley, the elder of Grantley's two sons, born on 20 Oct. 1825 and married on 4 March 1862 to Eliza Maria, only daughter of John Gray, of Wharnlands, Northumberland, and Trefin, Flintshire, and widow of Edward Dixon of Horsley House. ”

“ Religious tolerance was not one of his virtues, and the State Papers show that he put much pressure on the quakers. As a lawgiver he was esteemed wise and just. To him, in 1662, Moryson dedicated the 'Laws of Virginia now in force,' stating in the dedicatory address that Berkeley was the author of all the best laws. In 1676 he resigned the governorship and returned to England, and on 13 July 1677 he was buried at Twickenham. An unpublished play, 'Cornelia,' 1662, by 'Sir William Hartley,' is ascribed in 'Biographia Dramatica' — and no doubt correctly — to Berkeley. ”

“ Grantley Berkeley's second publication appeared in 1839, being 'A Pamphlet dedicated to the Noblemen, Gentlemen, and Sportsmen of England, Ireland, and Scotland. In Reply to a Prize Essay by the Rev. John Styles, D.D., on the Claims of the Animal Creation to the Humanity of Man,' 8vo, pp. 49. His only other novel, 'Sandron Hall, or the Days of Queen Anne,' 3 vols., was published in 1840. ”

“ Throughout 1672 there was much turbulence, owing to disputes about quit-rents between the inhabitants and the proprietors. Berkeley was by this time thoroughly dissatisfied, and sold his undivided moiety of the province for a thousand pounds to a party of Quakers who desired to found a retreat for their sect; nine tenths of this purchase soon (1674) fell into the hands of William Penn and other Friends who were associated with him. ”

“ Robert, the fifth son, [pg xxiv] became rector of Middleton and vicar-general of Cloyne; and another son, William, held a commission in the army. According to the Register of Trinity College, one of the sons was born “near Thurles,” in 1699, and Thomas, the youngest, was born in Tipperary, in 1703, so that the family may have removed from Dysert after the birth of George. In what can be gleaned of the younger sons, one finds little appearance of sympathy with the religious and philosophical genius of the eldest. ”

“ George, Lord (Earl) Berkeley, descended from Robert Fitzharding of the Royal House of Denmark, was 13th Lord Berkeley, succeeded to the title 1658, was privy councillor in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and was one of those who invited William III. of Orange to England: created Viscount Dursley and Earl Berkeley 1679. Died 1698. 52
255. Duke of Lauderdale, 1672. Obv. Bust r., in armour and cloak. Rev. Minerva seated r., resting her arm on shield, arms of Lauderdale, whose helmet and crest she holds in her left hand. Motto, CONSILIO ET ANIMIS. 1672. Joan Rott. F. Silver. ”

“ Berkeley was well enough to meet with in men's society, at mess, on parade, on the turf, or in the hunting-field; but though handsome and perfectly well-bred, for his manners were generally unexceptionable, he was not a man for the drawing-room. He was master of a splendid fortune, which was left him by his father, a plain old Scotchman, who had begun life as a drayman, and whose patronymic was simply John Dewar Barclay. ”

“ Being by his mother a nephew of Roger Mortimer, earl of March, the paramour of Queen Isabel, Maurice Berkeley married Elizabeth, daughter of Hugh Despenser, the younger of Edward II.’s favourites and the intruder in Berkeley Castle. With his son and heir Thomas of Berkeley, one of the commissioners of parliament for the deposing of Richard II. and a warden of the Welsh marches who harried Owen of Glendower, the direct male line of Robert fitz Harding failed, and but for the settlement of the estates Berkeley would have passed from the family. ”

“ Berkeley remained in America till the autumn of 1731. He bought a farm of ninety-six acres and built a small house, still standing, which he called Whitehall. Here he read and meditated ; a projecting rock near the sea is shown as the place where he wrote much of 'Alciphron,' and a chair in which he sat in the ' natural alcove ' is still preserved. The descriptions of scenery in ' Alciphron ' clearly represent his impressions. Berkeley saw something of the intelligent and educated colonists; he helped to found a philosophical society at Newport ”

“ His idealism is the purest which the British Isles have produced. Platonic as were Cudworth, Norris, Henry More, in cast of thought less scholastic than Taylor of Norwich,—who was an exotic, rather, transplanted from Alexandrian gardens,—Berkeley's thinking is indigenous, strong in native sense and active manliness. His works are magazines of rare and admirable learning, subtleties of speculation, noble philanthropies. They deserve a place in every scholar's library, were it but to mark the fortunes of thought, and accredit the poet's admiring line:—
"To Berkeley every virtue under heaven." ”

“ He did so; and because he did so, he begins the second period of modern philosophy. However we regard Berkeley—whether as a man, as a Christian philanthropist, or as a metaphysician—we find the same unconscious combination of practical sagacity and of refined enthusiasm, a keen eye for fact, and a deep mind for theory, along with a continual incapacity to combine adequately or express fully, either by action or speech, the double tendency which is the secret of his power. ”

“ Thus in the forty-fourth year of his life, in deep devotion to his Ideal, and full of glowing visions of a Fifth Empire in the West, Berkeley sailed for Rhode Island in a "hired ship of two hundred and fifty tons."
The New England Courier of that time gives this picture of his disembarkation at Newport: "Yesterday there arrived here Dean Berkeley, of Londonderry. He is a gentleman of middle stature, of an agreeable, pleasant, and erect aspect. He [Pg 31] was ushered into the town with a great number of gentlemen, to whom he behaved himself after a very complaisant manner." ”

“ The King probably called Berkeley his enemy because he was a member of the Opposition. Berkeley died a few years after his marriage with Lady Suffolk, but she survived him for more than twenty years. She lived, in dignified retirement, at her villa at Marble Hill, and retained, until the end of her life, the charm of manner and amiability, which had won her many friends. Horace Walpole used to visit her in her old age, and gleaned from her much material for his famous Memoirs. She died in 1767, in her eightieth year, having survived George the Second seven years. ”

“ Anyone can find them in a good history of philosophy, or better still, in Berkeley's own books, which are excellent reading and by no means difficult. And those who desire really to feel the discovery of Berkeley in all its ecstatic completeness, should read by preference the obscure and hurried notes of the Commonplace Book, in which, amid ingenuous remarks and ill-expressed revelations of the pride of discovery, one can witness the unfolding, or rather the explosion, of the theory of immaterialism. It is not a treatise fairly adorned and skillfully arranged, like a French garden ”

“ His cruelty and barbarity in punishing the rebels did not meet with the approval of Charles II., who is said to have remarked that “the old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I did here for the murder of my father.” Berkeley was called to England in 1677 ostensibly to report on the condition of affairs in the colony, and a lieutenant-governor (Herbert Jeffreys) was put in his place. Berkeley sailed in May, but died soon after his arrival, at Twickenham, and was buried there on the 13th of July 1677. ”

“ Berkeley, and his rhodomontading wife, were not suited to him, and as little her son Monke Berkeley, of whom she gave such an absurd and mendacious memoir, and who had none of his celebrated grandfather Bishop Berkeley's genius. Farmer had some cleverness, but no leading talent. ”

“ In a letter from London to his lifelong friend and patron, Lord Percival, then at Bath, we find Berkeley, under date of March, 1723, writing thus of the enterprise which had gradually fired his imagination: "It is now about ten months since I have determined to spend the residue of my days in Bermuda, where I trust in Providence I may be the mean [Pg 14] instrument of doing great good to mankind. The reformation of manners among the English in our western plantations, and the propagation of the gospel among the American savages, are two points of high moment. ”

“ When acquainted by his friend Percival with this frank statement, Berkeley accepted the blow as a philosopher should. Brave and resolutely patient, he prepared for departure. His books he left as a gift to the library of Yale College, and his farm of Whitehall was made over to the same institution, to found three scholar [Pg 34] ships for the encouragement of Greek and Latin study. ”

“ It will surprise many readers to find with what authenticity some of our great packs can carry back their history to bygone centuries. Of these the Berkeley bears the palm, for did not a Lord of Berkeley so far back as the fourteenth century establish a metropolitan pack with kennels at Charing Cross? His descendants had so fostered and spread their hunting that in 1770 the then Lord Berkeley held all the country from London to Berkeley Castle, in Gloucestershire, a distance of 124 miles, with kennels at Cranford, Gerrard’s Cross in Bucks, Nettlebed in Oxon, and at Berkeley Castle. ”

“ The elements of his immaterialism, then, were ready for his hand, but to Berkeley himself belongs the credit of having extended and developed the theories of his fathers in philosophy, the credit of setting forth as a dominant idea, clear, central, and in full light, the great principle that the world consists of naught save spirit and spiritual activity.
Even here, to be sure, one may discern Berkeley's theological preoccupations. Matter is an ancient enemy. ”

“ The poet Pope once assigned to this bishop "every virtue under heaven," and this high reputation a study of the man's character faithfully confirms. As a student at Dublin University, George Berkeley won many friends, because of his handsome face and lovable nature, and many honours by reason of his brilliancy in mathematics. Later he became a fellow of Trinity College, and made the acquaintance of Swift, Steele, and the other members of that brilliant Old World literary circle, by all of whom he seems to have been sincerely beloved. ”

“ Lord Fitzhardinge was never at Cranford when I was there, though I have, at various times, met all the other brothers.
THE BERKELEY'S. Frederick Berkeley went into the navy, and rose to the important position of an admiral; Craven Berkeley, Grantley Berkeley, and Henry Berkeley were all in Parliament. The latter was for many years Member for the important constituency of Bristol, and, probably in consequence of opinions acquired during his residence in the United States, was a consistent advocate for the introduction of vote by ballot in our elections. ”

“ Time alone weaves a canvas wide enough to do justice to their true proportions; and a few broad strokes is all that the genius of any one man, however gifted, is permitted to add to the mighty and illimitable work. It is therefore no reproach to Berkeley to say that he left his labours incomplete; that he was frequently misunderstood, that his reasonings fell short of their aim, and that he perhaps failed to carry with him the unreserved and permanent convictions of any one of his contemporaries. ”