William Berkeley, 1st Earl FitzHardinge refused to claim his right to the earldom. In 1831 William Berkeley was raised to the peerage as Baron Segrave, of Berkeley Castle in the County of Gloucester. Berkeley was returned to parliament as one of two representatives for Gloucestershire in 1810 (succeeding his uncle Sir George Cranfield-Berkeley), a seat he only held until 1811. In 1836 he was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, a post he retained until his death. In 1841 he was further honoured when he was made Earl FitzHardinge. Berkeley never married. He had several mistresses, and in 1821 John Waterhouse succeeded in an action for "criminal
Baron Berkeley each baron were coined by John Smith of Nibley (d.1641), steward of the Berkeley estates, the biographer of the family and author of "Lives of the Berkeleys". The feudal barony of Berkeley was created "circa" 1155, when King Henry II granted the royal castle of Berkeley to the Anglo-Saxon royal financier Robert Fitzharding under the feudal land tenure "per baroniam". Prior to that time Berkeley Castle had been held in fee-farm by Roger I "de Berkeley" (d.1093), a Norman nobleman, possibly a son of Roger I of Tosny (died circa 1040), who acquired the surname "de Berkeley". Roger I "de