Robert Berkeley (writer)
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Robert Berkeley (1713–1804) was an English political writer, who is assumed also to be a significant activist for Catholic emancipation of the 1770s.
He was the son of Thomas Berkeley of Spetchley, Worcestershire, and his wife Mary, daughter and heiress of Robert Davis, of Clytha, Monmouthshire; the father was great-grandson of Sir Robert Berkeley, the 17th-century judge. He was presumed to have been behind the petition to George III, by Catholic nobility and gentry, presented in 1778. A consequence was the Papists Act 1778.[1][2][3]
Thomas Phillips (1708–1774), biographer of Cardinal Pole, lived with Berkeley as his Catholic chaplain, from 1763 to 1765.[1][4] Another chaplain at Spetchley was Thomas Falkner (around 1769 to 1771).[5] Berkeley employed William Combe to edit Falkner's Description of Patagonia, in 1773.[6]
