To-day I have been at Berkeley and Thornbury Castles.  The first disappointed me much, though very entire.  It is much smaller than I expected, but very entire, except a small part burnt two years ago, while the present Earl was in the house.  The fire began in the housekeeper’s room, who never appeared more; but as she was strict over the servants, and not a bone of her was found, it was supposed that she was murdered, and the body conveyed away.  The situation is not elevated nor beautiful, and little improvements made of late, but some silly ones `a la Chinoise, by the present Dowager.  In good sooth, I can give you but a very imperfect account; for, instead of the lord’s being gone to dine with the mayor of Gloucester, as I expected, I found him in the midst of all his captains of the militia.  I am so sillily shy of strangers and youngsters, that I hurried through the chambers; and looked for nothing but the way out of every room.  I just observed that there were many bad portraits of the family, but none ancient; as if the Berkeleys had been commissaries, and raised themselves in the last war.  There is a plentiful addition of those of my Lord Berkeley of Stratton, but no knights templars, or barons as old as Edward I.; yet are there three beds on which there may have been as frisky doings three centuries ago, as there probably have been within these ten ears.  The room shown for the murder of Edward ii., and the shrieks of an agonizing king, I verily believe to be genuine.  It is a dismal chamber, almost at top of the house, quite detached, and to be approached only by a kind of foot-bridge, and from that ‘descends’ a large flight of steps that terminate on strong gates; exactly the situation for a corps de garde.  In that room they show you a cast of a face in plaister, and tell you it was taken from Edward’s.  I was not quite so easy of faith about that; for it is evidently the face of Charles I.

The steeple of the church, lately rebuilt handsomely, stands some paces from the body; in the latter are three tombs of the old Berkeleys;, with cumbent figures.  The wife of the Lord Berkeley,(116) who was supposed to be privy to the murder, has a curious headgear; it is like a long horseshoe, quilted in quatrefoils; and, like Lord Foppington’s wig, allows no more than the breadth of a half-crown to be discovered of the face.  Stay, I think I mistake; the husband was a conspirator against Richard ii. not Edward.  But in those days, loyalty was not so rife as at present.

>From Berkeley Castle I went to Thornbury, of which the ruins are half-ruined.  It would have been glorious, if finished.(117) I wish the lords of Berkeley had retained the spirit of deposing till Henry the VIIIth’s time!  The situation is fine, though that was not the fashion; for all the windows of the great apartment look into the inner court.  The prospect was left to the servants.  Here I had two adventures.  I could find nobody to show