Notes on Rowland Berkeley (-1611)
excerpt from "The City of Worcester in the sixteenth century" by Alan D Dyer, Leicester University Press, 1973, pp 186-7
Another outstanding career was that of Roland Barklay. He was very distantly related to the distinguished Gloucestershire family of Berkeley, but his father was mayor of Hereford in 1545. Roland was the second son, probably coming to Worcester early in the reign of Elizabeth as a clothier's apprentice. In 1583, the year of his father's death, he joined the Twentyfour. His business career was highly successful, and by the early seventeenth century he had moved out to Spechley, some three miles from the city; five of his seven daughters married city men, but of his six sons, two became London merchants, another became a judge and succeeded him as the Lord of Spechley, while the remaining three all founded minor gentry families of their own in the villages of the shire. The Barklays continued at Spechley into the present century.