Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, brother to Henry III., held it. He wrote to his brother from hence in 1261, and died here in 1271-2, as did his wife Isabel Mareschal in 1239. His son Edmund had the castle, town, and halimote. In 1299 the castle was returned as yielding no rental; but the millpool and the castle ditches let for the fishing at 20s. per annum. There was then a water-mill and a park with deer. It was a part of the dower of Margaret of France, the second wife of Edward I., who died 1317. Edward II. gave it, with the earldom of Cornwall, to Gaveston; and to the Black Prince, as Duke of Cornwall, came from his father the castle, manor, vill, park, and honour of Berkhampstead, the lands of which extended into Herts, Bucks, and Northamptonshire. It was put in order for the residence of John of France, and the Black Prince was here not long before his death. It was also used by the favourite of Richard II., Robert de Vere, Marquis of Dublin, who had licence to inhabit it. Here, also, died Cicely Nevill, the mother of Edward IV. Queen Elizabeth leased it to Sir Edward Carey, whose grandson employed its material to build Berkhampstead Place, since which it has been leased to various persons, and was finally sold to the Egertons, whose descendant in the female line, Earl Brownlow, is the owner also of the adjacent park of Ashridge. BERKELEY CASTLE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. The Severn, below Shrewsbury, which on the map seems to mark a natural division between England and the southern part of the Principality of Wales, neither is, nor ever has been, really the dividing line. It is not, in those parts even, a county boundary, Gloucester, Worcester, and Salop being astride upon the stream, with large portions of their area upon its western bank. To go back to the sixth century, when the West Saxons, starting from the coast of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, pressed hard upon the Britons, many indications still show how firm was the resistance, so long as the ground was favourable; but, when once fairly driven over the crest of the Cotteswold, the Britons evidently retired more rapidly across the open country, nor is it until the commencement of the high ground is reached, that we find works which abundantly show how fierce was the struggle, how close and persistent the attack. The high ground which forms the western edge of the Marches is studded thickly with camps, the position and figure of which show them to be British, while the adjacent frontiers of Gloucester, Hereford and Shropshire, are covered with moated mounds, placed both within and without the Dyke of Offa, and which show both the extent of the English conquests and the manner in which they were maintained before and during the eighth and ninth centuries.