THE BERKELEYS AND THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE YEOMANRY
By Phil Legg
The Berkeley family took a particular interest in local part-time military forces, including the yeomanry. This was partly because of their role as Lords Lieutenant of Gloucestershire which they held on a number of occasions. The 5th Earl of Berkeley, for example, Frederick Augustus (1745-1810), was Lord Lieutenant from 1766 to 1810. He helped to keep the Gloucestershire yeomanry cavalry going through a period of peace in 1802 when government support waned, and to re-establish yeomanry troops in 1803, for which he received a letter of thanks from the Speaker of the House of Commons. In 1810 the Prince of Wales and his brother, the Duke of Sussex, stayed at Berkeley Castle and visited Gloucester with a yeomanry escort, returning via Bristol similarly accompanied.
William FitzHardinge Berkeley (1786-1857) was the eldest son of the 5th Earl of Berkeley and Mary Cole. As such he was eventually styled Viscount Dursley, the title given to heirs to the Berkeley earldom, but he was denied the right to the earldom due to his illegitimacy. In 1810, he became Colonel of the Royal South Gloucestershire Militia. In 1831, he was created Baron Segrave and in 1841, he was granted the further title of Earl FitzHardinge. He was Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire from 1835 until his death in 1857. In his first year he invited members of the Gloucestershire Yeomanry Cavalry (which had formed into a single regiment in 1834) to dinner at Berkeley Castle. He did the same in 1837.
In 1840, while still Lord Segrave, he raised a new squadron for the regiment from among his tenants at Berkeley which was put under the command of his younger brother, Captain George Charles Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley (1800-1881), who had previously been commissioned in the Coldstream Guards and the 82nd Regiment of Foot. The Gloucestershire Yeomanry Cavalry was granted the ‘Royal’ prefix in 1841 and was styled ‘Hussars’ from 1847 with the title Royal Gloucestershire Hussars. Social standing was very important in the yeomanry which recruited mainly from landholders and tenant farmers, and which was officered by nobility and gentry. This became evident when a bitter quarrel developed between Earl FitzHardinge and his brother Grantley in 1847. The Earl has been called “a thorough-paced cad”[i] and “a rotter”[ii]. He tried unsuccessfully to get Grantley replaced as the officer commanding the Berkeley Squadron. He also instructed any of his tenants who were in that squadron to resign immediately and encouraged political opposition to Grantley as MP for West Gloucestershire. There was widespread condemnation of FitzHardinge’s actions and much sympathy for Grantley, although widely regarded as an unpleasant man himself, with one tenant referring to Fitzhardinge as “a snake in the grass”[iii]. Grantley eventually resigned from the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars in protest and the Berkeley Squadron lost a lot of its members.
At the top of the staircase leading down to the Billiard Room in Berkeley Castle is an impressive portrait of Francis William FitzHardinge Berkeley, 2nd Baron Fitzhardinge (1826-1896), in military uniform. This is the full-dress uniform of the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars Yeomanry Cavalry, of which he was commanding officer from 1884. This painting was presented to Lady Fitzhardinge on the baron’s retirement in 1887.
The 2nd Baron Fitzhardinge was the eldest son of Admiral Maurice Berkeley, 1st Baron FitzHardinge, and nephew of the 1st Earl FitzHardinge. He had served as a captain in the Royal Horse Guards and later became Honorary Colonel and then Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant of the Royal South Gloucestershire Light Infantry Militia. By 1864 he was also a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars, with whom he had a very positive relationship. He may now be regarded as “an unsuccessful Dairy Shorthorn breeder”[iv] but he did much to keep the regimental standards up during the 1870s when bad harvests understandably affected the attendance of farmers with the yeomanry. Fitzhardinge became the commanding officer of the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars in 1884. In 1886 Lord Wolseley commented in an official letter: “The efficiency of this fine Regiment reflects very great credit on Colonel Lord Fitzhardinge, and his Officers and Non-commissioned Officers”[v].
In 1887 Fitzhardinge had to retire as commanding officer, having reached the age of sixty, and he was presented with an ornamental silver centrepiece. Lady Fitzhardinge received the previously mentioned portrait of the baron. Fitzhardinge continued to take an interest in the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars but the Berkeley Squadron, having already been reduced to a troop, was amalgamated with the Gloucester Troop to form a new 1st Squadron in 1888. Baron Fitzhardinge died in 1896, marking the end of his family’s involvement with the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars.
[i] B Falk, The Berkeleys of Berkeley Square (Hutchinson & Co; London, 1944), p216
[ii] T Scotland, Lennox & Freda (Michael Russell; Norwich, 2010), p452.
[iii] W Wyndham Quin, The Yeomanry Cavalry of Gloucestershire and Monmouth (Westley’s Library; Cheltenham, 1898), p.163
[iv] Scotland, p.33
[v] Wyndham Quin, p.229