James BERKELEY

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• FamilySearch ID: LLWF-Q3T
• _UID: 2D39CDBA4D074BA89F73988E265FA150E248

Family/Spouse: Unknown. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events:

• _UID: 4134EDF26A9A4BAEA8229D82BE233717694A

Notes:

The following post to SGM, 30 Sep 1998, by John Carmi Parsons, gives some details of Mary:

From: John Carmi Parsons ([email protected])
Subject: Henry VIII's bastards
Newsgroups: soc.genealogy.medieval
Date: 1998/09/30

Henry VIII is said to have fathered by Mary (or Elizabeth) Berkeley, afterwards wife of Thomas Perrott of Istingston and Harroldston, Pembs., a son known as John Perrott (1527?-1592). "Commonly reputed" (_Dict. of Natl Biography_, s.v. "Perrott, sir John") as the king's son, Perrott bore a remarkable resemblance to the king and in later years openly referred to himself as Elizabeth I's brother. He was created K.B. for the coronation of Edward VI in 1547 and, in the official account of Elizabeth I's coronation procession through London, Perrott is the only individual apart from Elizabeth herself who is mentioned by name. He served as Deputy of Ireland for Elizabeth I and in connection with his tenure of that office (not his birth) he was accused of high treason but died in the Tower before he could be convicted (in fact Elizabeth may well have been preparing to pardon him at the time of his death, and later restored his son to his estates).

He married twice:

First to Anne, da. of Sir Thomas Cheyney of Shurland (Kent), and had one son, Sir Thomas Perrot, m. Dorothy Devereux, dau. of Walter, earl of Essex

Second to Jane dau. of Hugh Pruet of Thorny, Devon, and had another son William (d. unm 1597), a dau. Anne m. John Philips, and a dau. Lettice m. first, Roland Lacharn of St Bride's; second, Walter Vaughan also of St Bride's (from which marriage the present viscount St David's descends).

Sir John Perrott also left three natural children:

1-2. Sir James Perrott (1571-1637) by Sibyl Jones of co. Radnor; and also by her a dau. who m. one David Morgan, gent.

3. Elizabeth, dau. of Sir Christopher Hatton (!), he had a dau. Elizabeth m. Hugh Butler of Johnston.

Perrott's living progeny must be innumerable by now. But few biographies of Henry VIII refer to him and many historians are unaware of his existence. Has anyone any confirming evidence for his paternity?

Many historians are also unaware of the existence of at least one other bastard child of Henry VIII, his daughter Etheldreda or Audrey Malte, the child of Joan Dingley or Dyngley, said to have been a royal laundress. Joan Dingley subsequently married a man named Dobson. It appears that the king's tailor, John Malte, was persuaded to recognize Audrey as *his* illegitimate daughter, but that hardly explains the extensive lands Henry granted the girl.

Like John Perrott, Audrey seems to have been born during the years in which Henry's marriage to Katherine of Aragon was deteriorating but before Anne Boleyn became his official mistress and bedfellow--i.e., in the late 1520s. Audrey Malte married in the year of King Henry's death (1547) John Harrington (d. 1582). She was living in 1555 (Cal. Patent Rolls 1555-57, pp. 95-96), but had died without issue by around 1559 when her husband must have remarried (his eldest son by his second wife was born ca 1560). Her widower obtained much of her property after her death. See N. E. McClure, _Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington_ (Philadelphia, 1930), p. 64; _Misc. Genealogica et Heraldica_, N.S., iii, p. 18, and iv, p. 191.

So, with the ill-fated Henry fitz Roy, duke of Richmond, Henry VIII had in all as many as 3 bastards. This should bring about some revision of the position taken in Ives' _Anne Boleyn_ that Henry suffered from low fertility. After all, Katherine of Aragon conceived at least 6 times by Henry within 9 years (1509-18); Henry fitz Roy was conceived in 1518 or 1519, for a 7th pregnancy Henry caused within those same 9 years. As above, John Perrott and Audrey Malte were probably both born in the late 1520s after Henry had ceased to cohabit with Katherine of Aragon. Had Henry kept a single mistress in those years, there might have been a more regular pattern of births, but his sexual liaisons at that time seem to have been brief.

Anne Boleyn conceived at least 3 times between December 1532 and late 1535--that is, 3 times in 3 years. Ives' argument that Anne's pregnancies were oddly spaced, that Henry seemed "unable" to make her pregnant for more than a year after she miscarried in 1534, seems strained and tendentious.

Jane Seymour married Henry in May 1536 and must have conceived Edward VI in February 1537, only 9 months after their marriage.

Probably Henry never consummated his marriage with Anne of Cleves.

If Katherine Howard never conceived by Henry, neither did she conceive by a lover, suggesting that (a) she was lucky in this if in little else; (b) her early promiscuity left her barren through abortion, miscarriage or venereal infection; (c) she had access to some kind of efficacious contraceptive lore. Her grandmother's house had clearly been a hothouse of sexual activity among the young girls living there, who would clearly have had every reason to welcome such contraceptive information, and it might later have stood Katherine in good stead. (Or maybe not.)

If Henry VIII did cohabit with Katherine Parr, he may well have suffered from lower fertility levels by that time in his life because of his chronic osteomyelitis, resulting from a tournament injury suffered early in life. Katherine was certainly fertile at this time, for she married her 4th husband, Thomas Seymour, in May 1547 and died in childbirth in September 1548.

John Parsons

Mary married before 1526 in No Marriage. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]