Berkeley family Constable (Alnod), a high official under King Edward the Confessor. Berkeley Castle, the "caput" of the barony, and the adjoining town of Berkeley are located in the county of Gloucestershire and are situated about five miles west of Dursley and eighteen miles southwest of Gloucester, and northeast of Bristol. The location has conferred various titles on the family over the centuries, including Baron Berkeley (barony by writ), Earl of Berkeley, and Marquess of Berkeley. Berkeley Castle was originally granted by William the Conqueror to the Norman Roger de Berkeley, feudal baron of Dursley, under the feudal tenure of fee-farm. However,
Baron Berkeley that the barony by writ was deemed, extraordinarily, to be in effect a feudal barony (or barony by tenure), dependent on the tenure of Berkeley Castle. Thus when William Berkeley, 1st Marquess of Berkeley, 2nd Baron Berkeley (1426–1492), "William the Waste-All", alienated Berkeley Castle to the king, he effectively disinherited his younger brother from the barony by writ. The heir apparent is his son the Hon. Thomas FitzHardinge Gueterbock (b. 1969) The Earldom of Berkeley, together with the Viscountcy Dursley, was separated from the barony in 1882, but the accession was not fully established. In 1942 both titles became extinct