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
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