User:Craigy144/CB

Charles Berkeley, 2nd Earl of Berkeley, KB, PC (8 April 1649 – 24 September 1710) was an English peer, known as Viscount Dursley from 1679 to 1698.

Berkeley was born on 8 April 1649, the son of Charles Berkeley and his wife, Elizabeth, and was baptised at St Bartholomew-the-Great on 23 April 1649. At the coronation of Charles II in 1661, he was made a Knight of the Bath, aged 12.

On 16 August 1677, he married Hon. Elizabeth Noel (the daughter of Baptist Noel, 3rd Viscount Campden) at Exton, Rutland and they later had seven children:


 * Charles, briefly styled Viscount Dursley (1679–1699)
 * James, later styled Viscount Dursley, later 3rd Earl of Berkeley
 * Hon. Henry Berkeley (1690–1736)
 * Hon. George Berkeley (d. 1746)
 * Lady Elizabeth Berkeley (died 1769), married Sir John Germain, 1st Baronet
 * Lady Mary Berkeley, married Thomas Chambers, of Hanworth, Middlesex
 * Lady Penelope Berkeley (died unmarried)

Berkeley was a member of the committee of the Levant Company from 1678 to 1679 and of the East India Company from 1699 to 1705 and a Whig Member of Parliament for Gloucester from 1679 to 81.

Envoy to Madrid 1689; sum. to Parliament v.p. 11 Jul 1689 in his father's Barony of Berkeley; Envoy to the States of Holland 1689-95; Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire 1694-1710 and of Surrey 1702-10; Privy Councillor 1694; High Steward of Gloucester 1695; Constable of St Briavel's Castle and Warden of the Forest of Dean 1697-1710; a Lord Justice and Governor of Ireland 1699-1700