Thomas de Berkeley, 5th Baron Berkeley Thomas de Berkeley, 5th Baron Berkeley Thomas de Berkeley, 5th Baron Berkeley (5 January 1352/53 – 13 July 1417), "The Magnificent", of Berkeley Castle and of Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire, was an English peer and an admiral. His epithet, and that of each previous and subsequent head of his family, was coined by John Smyth of Nibley (d.1641), steward of the Berkeley estates, the biographer of the family and author of "Lives of the Berkeleys". He was born at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, the son and heir of Maurice de Berkeley, 4th Baron Berkeley by his wife Elizabeth le Despencer. In
Maurice Berkeley (died 1581) Maurice Berkeley (died 1581) Sir Maurice Berkeley (by 1514–81) of Bruton in Somerset, was an English politician who rose rapidly in the Tudor court. He came from a cadet branch of the great Berkeley family of Berkeley Castle, but in his career his initial advantage was his mother's second marriage to Sir John FitzJames, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench 1526–1539, which by 1538 had brought him into the household of Thomas Cromwell, from which he passed into the royal household by 1539. He built a house on the site of Bruton Priory, a spoil of the Dissolution of