The Berkeley Series

 

The Berkeley story is woven from wide-reaching research arising from The Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee of Privileges on the Earl of Berkeley's Pedigree - 1799 and 1811 and A Narrative of the Minutes of Evidence respecting the claim to The Berkeley Peerage, 1811.

 

 

 

Each book can be read as a 'standalone', the three titles forming three arcs within a greater arc.

 

 

The Berkeley Series is a tribute to a brave lady, neither victim nor villain, who fought her corner in the House of Lords in 1811 when issues were not only of gender, but of class.

 #womenshistory #Georgian #biographical

 

'Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.'

Ralph Waldo Emerson (since occasionally attributed to Jessamyn West)

'There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.'

Doris Lessing

 

 

 

 

 

'...wonderfully done. These are my ancestors. Her research is remarkable. Excellent review of History, both family and English.' 

Jean Batton (Amazon Review)


'An entertaining treat with enough history to satisfy serious-minded readers.'

Kirkus Reviews

 

And...a view of fiction I wholeheartedly share...

'...what I love is fiction that recognises the contexts of the characters. Fiction not set in a vacuum. Personally, socially or politically. Fiction with both politics and Politics.  And that takes research.'

Kerry Young, Bridport Novel Award Judge 2016

  

First Book and Second Book now available on Amazon Kindle. 

 

  

  

Butcher's daughter rocks and rescues English dynasty. The story of Mary Cole, 5th Countess of Berkeley, focus of a sensational cause célèbre of the Georgian era.

 

First Book and Second Book now available on Amazon Kindle

 

The Wolf and The Lamb, First Book in the Berkeley Series 1783 – 1799  Please click link to buy on Amazon Kindle. Print temporarily unavailable.

  

 

When Mary Cole, a butcher's daughter, caught the eye of Lord Berkeley, it was as flint to tinder. A libertine and a forsworn bachelor, he was taken aback that the Catholic-reared beauty refused to be his mistress. Within weeks he'd brought her family to bankruptcy. When, still, she eluded him, he devised a theatrical plot to abduct her.

It was then that he knew he could not let her go.

Aided by his corrupt chaplain, Hupsman, the Earl duped his 'shepherdess' with fake nuptials.

Tumbling to the truth, Mary became passionately committed to gaining her eldest son's birthright. With an astonishing grasp of pastoral economy, she repaired the Berkeley fortunes while a succession of children compounded her plight.

Her estranged sisters, meanwhile, were moving among the glitterati of Pitt’s England and the New America and their scandalous activities had to be curtailed at the highest level before a legal knot was eventually tied.

Upon Hupsman's death, the temptation to affirm the ‘first marriage’ proved too strong for the Earl and Countess and they conspired in a criminal act to ‘find’ the registry. The upshot was a sensational trial in the House of Lords in 1811 whose repercussions were to shake the foundations of the Berkeley dynasty for ever and put Mary’s life at risk.

Was that marriage a sham? Or was it a timeless truth?

 

Excerpt:

"I have been as much sold as any lamb that goes to the shambles!"

Often she had watched them in the fickle days of spring, skipping about the lush meadows of Gloucester, exulting in the gift of life. Steadily they grew fat and independent of the placid ewes, unaware of the shadow of the butcher's blade, or that they were destined for some rich man's table.

That was long ago, when Mary was a slip of a thing and Pa kept The Swan Tavern at Barnwood and grazed livestock there. He used to send his meat into the city of Gloucester and numbered among his customers many of the great houses of the Vale. They were well-known, the Coles. Folk grumbled about their airs and graces, but William Cole was a respected tradesman who never sold anyone short. He was proud of his three lovely daughters, of whom Mary was the youngest, and had high hopes of his fourth child, his namesake, Billy, despite the shameless way the women of the household mollycoddled him. His wife, too, was a comely body who earned pin money by nursing sick and newborn infants and saw no contradiction in this humble occupation and that state to which she aspired. "For," observed she, "high birth or lowly, tis nought but an accident. Nobility of character is what signifies." Mary possessed a natural reserve and took this dictum to heart, but her sisters were wanton and Cole was relieved when his eldest, Ann, took up with Will Farren, a likely fellow in the same trade as himself, and went to live in Butchers' Row, Westgate, in wedded safekeeping.

Life was simple then. The sun always seemed to be shining. Mary delighted in picking nosegays of sweet peas and lavender from her father's garden and went capering off to school with them, adding poppies and buttercups and Queen Anne's lace along the bridle way.

But in the year 1783, when Farmer George was King and Mary was full-grown, the recent death of old Cole marked a dramatic change in the family's fortune....

KIRKUS REVIEW 



The Sheep and The Goats, Second Book in the Berkeley Series 1799 – 1811  Please click to buy on Amazon Kindle. Print temporarily unavailable. 

 

Now moving freely in aristocratic society, Mary must distinguish between enemy and ally! Even under her own roof, appearances can be deceptive and the husband about whom she has no illusions further falls from grace when certain matters come to light. The young Fitz’s philandering reputation is proving every bit as robust as his father’s and it's not long before he is caught up in amorous and political intrigue. When Hupsman's dying confession surfaces, the situation worsens and the dramatic death of Lord Berkeley brings the succession crisis to a head. Who will support the Countess’ story before the peers of the realm? And who will speak against her in revenge?

Excerpt

For, heaven be thanked, we live in such an age, when no man dies for love but on the stage.

Was Dryden’s wisdom to be trusted?

The Arundel ball had drooped to a close, its sprightly airs skimming the shadows of the mind. Dawn was breaking.

Frederick Augustus, 5th Earl of Berkeley, wondered grimly if it would be his last. He entered Rewell Wood with a bravura gait, taunted by flashbacks of a life that was more random patchwork than silk tapestry depicting a parable. He would be leaving behind a heap of disordered affairs.

A swell of pigeons let fly at his approach. The air was moss-damp and tainted with mould. No sign of his royal antagonist. Cumberland’s second had been instructed to resist any form of negotiation. The vengeful blade was as surly as he was suave, although Berkeley himself had thrown down the gauntlet upon catching his virtuous spouse in the Duke’s clutches. What was a fellow to do? Honour demanded that he defend her, King’s spawn or not. In the light of recent debate over the legitimacy of their eldest sons, it behoved him to take the Duke to task in the most decided terms. Besides, Berkeley loved Mary with a yearning he shied from admitting. It had flourished through stress and misfortune against all expectation. Back in the eighties, he had purchased her from butcher’s stock for the sum of one hundred guineas and little imagined how his solipsist world would be overturned. The Cole family had done very well out of him since then, and he who reckoned he was nobody’s fool had become the Jester of the deck.

The sun’s hemisphere began to smelt the edges of the horizon and send darting beams through the trees. A pheasant waddled across the misty track ahead as if daring him to pursue, a ridiculous creature without streamlined motion. Actaeon, he thought. (It was forty years since his academic days.) The hunter become the hunted.

His musings were interrupted by a heavy crackle in the brushwood. A patch of hide resolved itself into the finest heraldic beast he had ever seen, with antlers like blasted oaks, its proud head surrounded by the radiance of the morning. The stag gazed at him, imperially aloof, as if awaiting homage. Berkeley stood stock still. It was the start of the rutting season and he was not so foolish as to ignore that. Yet it was not fear that inspired him, it was a deliquescence of muscle and bone, stronger than for a covetable woman, at beholding such a creature in its perfect element. It listened, pawed the turf, then flexed its neck and vanished between the nankeen boughs.

Berkeley started, as out of a dream. Human voices announced the gruesome business of the day. Three figures were approaching. His adversary engaged his eye with cold reserve.

So this was it. The ritual of preparation. The careful pacing of distance. The cocking of pistols and taking aim. The fixing upon the white kerchief. Or was it a flag of surrender? His temples throbbed; his heart was in his fingertips. He was captive to the moment. Behind and beyond were meaningless.

A double salvo sent a raucous confusion of birds into the ether. Berkeley discharged upwards. Hot metal travelling at the speed of light whined past his ear. The power of it stung his skin. The smell of sulphur and singed hair filled his nostrils. Scalding blood surged back into his veins. He was alive! The sun in all its Indian summer glory was coming up! He was being given a second chance!

But Prince Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, single-sighted as he was, had not intended it so.

For more information see Rocking The Dynasty

 

The Peeress and The Playboy, Third Book in the Berkeley Series 1811 - 1844 (WIP)  Please note: Schedule suspended until 2022. Due for publication 2024.

 

 

Posts on this theme:

Byron, Berkeley and Mrs Bunn

Midnight, October 29th, 1844

Ships At A Distance...