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
Edward II of England such an easily detectable fashion. Another set of theories surround the possibility that Edward did not really die in 1327. These theories typically involve the "Fieschi Letter", sent to Edward III by an Italian priest called Manuel Fieschi, who claimed that Edward escaped Berkeley Castle in 1327 with the help of a servant and ultimately retired to become a hermit in the Holy Roman Empire. The body buried at Gloucester Cathedral was said to be that of the porter of Berkeley Castle, killed by the assassins and presented by them to Isabella as Edward's corpse to avoid punishment. The letter