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Berkeley was born 12th March 1685, in Kilkenny Ireland. He was educated in Trinity College, Dublin and was admitted as a fellow in 1707. Two years later he published his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision and the year after that his Principles of Human Knowledge .

The Principles did not go down as well as Berkeley would have liked. His friend Sir John Percival told him that a doctor in London had read his book and...

"undertook to describe your person, and argued that you must needs be mad, and that you ought to take remedies."

His next book was an attempt at making his ideas more accessible to his readers. The philosophy of the Principles was written up in the form of three dialogues between two fictional characters, Philonous and Hylas. He took his Three Dialogues to London, a work that was to be a far greater success than the Principles. Berkeley found himself a hit on the London literary scene, he made friends with Swift and was described by Queen Anne as "a very ingenious man and a great philosopher. "

It was just his philosophy that was popular, Berkeley the man was a real hit with the people he met. He seems to be universally liked and respected by all around him. His friend wrote of him:

Ev'n in a bishop I can spy desert,
Secker is decent, Rundel has a heart;
Manners with candour are to Benson giv'n,
To Berkeley ev'ry virtue under heaven.

More objectively, the Bishop Atterbury, who was not a personal acquaintance wrote:

' So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and so much humility, I did not think had been in the portion of any but angels until I saw this gentleman .'

In 1723 he was given a postion in the Church, the Dean of Derry. The position came with an annual income of £1,100 a year, this alonh with a substantial and wholly unexpected legacy left to him the year before (by a lady, who he hardly knew but was a friend of Swift) meant that Berkeley was financially secure. Berkeley held the post of Dean for ten years, spending at least three in London and a further three in America. He had ambitious plans to set up a college in Bermuda to which ends he managed to persuade five Trinity fellows to move to the new college and raise £6000. In London his plans were intially mocked but after a chance of defending himself he was promised public funds to the tune of £20K which at the time would have paid for the building and maintaining of the college and the salaries of the staff. Unfortunately the promise wasn't honoured and Berkeley never recieved the money, he left America in 1731.

He lived in London, with the wife he married before going to America, until he was made Bishop of Cloyne in 1734. He moved immediately to Cloyne where he lived for the rest of his days. He died, visiting his son in Oxford in 1753.

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