Berkeley family

Arms of the Berkeley family from about 1200: Gules, a chevron between 10 crosses pattée 6 in chief and 4 in base argent. This version is sometimes blazoned as 6 in chief 3 and 3 corner-wise. Motto: Virtute non vi ("By virtue not force").
Jan Kip's aerial view of Berkeley Castle engraved for the antiquary Sir Robert Atkyns' The Ancient and Present State of Glostershire, 1712.

The Berkeley family is an ancient English noble family. It is one of only five families in Britain that can trace its patrilineal descent back to an Anglo-Saxon ancestor (the other four being the Arden family, the Swinton family, the Wentworth family, and the Grindlay family).[1][2][3] The Berkeley family retains possession of much of the lands it held from the 11th and 12th centuries, centred on Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, which still belongs to the family.

  1. ^ Sir Bernard Burke: A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Colonial Gentry: Vol.I: Wentworth of Vaucluse: pp.95-97
  2. ^ Greenlee, Ralph Stebbins (1908). Genealogy of the Greenlee Families in America, Scotland, Ireland and England. Privately Printed.
  3. ^ Burke, Sir Bernard. A Genealogical & Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland, 18th Edition, Volume 1