Maurice Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley Maurice Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley Maurice Berkeley, "de jure" 3rd Baron Berkeley (1435 – September 1506), of Thornbury in Gloucestershire, "Maurice the Lawyer", was an English nobleman. He was born at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, the younger son of James Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley (c. 1394–1463), "James the Just", by his third wife Isabel de Mowbray, and was the younger brother and heir of William Berkeley, 1st Marquess of Berkeley, 2nd Baron Berkeley (1426–1492), "William the Waste-All". Because of his marriage to Isabel Meade, the daughter of a Bristol alderman, who was considered to be below his social status, Maurice
Berkeley Castle before returning him to Berkeley Castle in September. Some commentators have claimed that Edward's escape was actually successful, and that someone else was later murdered in his place. Historical sources record that Edward was murdered there on 21 September 1327. Raphael Holinshed's "Chronicles" (1587 edition), drawing on earlier sources, describes Edward's murder in detail:they [the murderers] came suddenlie one night into the chamber where he laie in bed fast asléepe, and with heauie featherbeds or a table (as some [sources] write) being cast vpon him, they kept him down and withall put into his fundament [i.e., his anus] an horne,