User:Serial Number 54129/Berkeley inheritance dispute

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Berkeley inheritance dispute[edit]

The Berkeley inheritance dispute took place over a period of nearly two hundred years in the fourteenth- and fifteenth centuries. Originally sparked by a contentious and unclear will, it ultimately resulted in armed struggle and a battlefield confrontation.

Background[edit]

Disputed inheritances were not unusual in Late Medieval England. The Paston family were embroiled in a ten-year long lawsuit with the Winter family in the first half of the fifteenth-century;[1] the Clifton-Knyvett dispute over Buckenham in Norfolk of the 1440s-50s; [2], and the Kentish Lovelace familly dispute of the second half.[3] Even the highest magnates in the land were not exempt- the powerful northern Neville family resorted to armed fighting along side litigation during their intrafamilial Neville-Neville feud.[4] The historian K.B. McFarlane put this down to a desire by landowners to make provision for younger sons- something effectively prevented by primogeniture at the time- and therefore having to find ways around the common law.[5] More recently Michael Hicks has shown how, whilst the sheer amount of litigation taking place demonstrates the faith people had in the courts, he also notes that by going to law, the threat of physical violence could actually be enhanced.[6] In this, the Berkeley dispute has been noted as combining both elements. Citing the Berkeley family's own eighteenth-century historian, John Smythe, Alexandra Sinclair has recently said that although it originated 'over an inheritance, the fued embrioled suceeding members of the Berkely family and their relatives in 'blouddy brawls and lawe suits of one hundred and ninety-two years agitation.'[7]

The Battle of Nibley Green[edit]

Described by a contemporaries as a day of 'knighthood and manhood,' William, Marquis Berkeley confronted Viscount Lisle, each with a force of approximately 1,000 men, and took advantage of what Bellamy has called the general 'disarray in government circles at the time.' use Bellamy further[8] Called by Hicks a 'Trial by battle'[9] and 'private war' by Christine Carpenter, it was the final confrontation between the Berkely and Talbot families.[10]

References[edit]

  1. ^ http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21511
  2. ^ Virgoe, R., 'Inheritance and Litigation in the Fifteenth Century: The Buckenham Disputes’, in East Anglian Society and the Political Community of Late Medieval England: Selected Papers (Norwich, 1997).
  3. ^ Fleming, P. W., 'The Lovelace Dispute- Concepts of Property and Inheritance in Fifteenth-Century Kent', Southern History, 11 (1991), 1.
  4. ^ Petre, J., ‘The Nevilles of Brancepeth and Raby, 1425–1499 [pt 1]’, The Ricardian 5 (1979–81), 424
  5. ^ K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), 67-8.
  6. ^ Hicks, M.A., 'Lawmakers and lawbreakers', in An illustrated history of late medieval England, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Manchester, 1996), 223.
  7. ^ Sinclair, A., 'The Great Berkeley Law-Suit Revisited, 1417-39', Southern History 9 (1987), 34.
  8. ^ Bellamy, J.G., Bastard Feudalism and the Law, (Routledge, 1989), 42.
  9. ^ Hicks, M.A., English Political Culture in the Fifteenth Century' (London, 2002), 60.
  10. ^ Carpenter, C., The Wars of the Roses:Politics and the Constitution in England, c.1437-1509 (Cambridge, 1997), 175.


  1. ^ Ellis 2012, pp. 416–7.
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