University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XX

FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF SIR WILLIAM
BERKELEY

The ambassador of Venice, standing in the midst of the
splendors of Versailles, was asked by Louis XIV to mention
what impressed him most in his surroundings. "To find
myself here, your Majesty," was the unexpected reply. The
presence of Berkeley at Jamestown in 1642 must have occasioned
him to feel a somewhat similar sensation, not because
the environment was splendid from any point of view, but,
on the contrary, because it was a bare, raw, and unattractive
village in the gross wilderness, while he himself was one of
the most polished courtiers of his time. That was a scene
which might possess a charm for an Englishman with a taste
for an isolated, independent existence in the remote plantations
beyond sea; but a man of Berkeley's type,—a favorite
in London drawing rooms, the glass of fashion and the mould
of form, and at the same time, so gifted in intellect and so
highly educated that he had won some notable successes as a
playright,—why should he, brilliantly placed as he was in the
greatest capital of the world, be willing to turn his back on
all its pleasures and diversions, and take steps to cross a wild
ocean to become the governor of a sparsely populated colony,
without wealth, without cities, without social distinction? Did
he desire to use his new position to make money, like his successors,
Culpeper and Howard, and afterwards to return like
them to England to spend it? He was never suspected of
peculation, and he never left the Colony until forced to do so
by the upshot of the rebellion in 1676. His fortune seemed to

Sir William Berkeley

be as large at the beginning of his administration as it was at
the end, thirty-five years later on.

Into that lonely, unconquered region, with its vast forests
and its great rivers, leaped this vigorous, bustling, impulsive
representative of the oldest English aristocracy gathered
about the court at Whitehall, and, before many years had
passed, he had become as thorough a Virginian in heart and
mind as if he had been born and had grown up within the
sound of the soughing pines of the coast and the rippling inland
streams. To the courage and high spirit of the cavalier, he
joined the cavalier's preposterous notions of the King's
divine right, and the sacredness of all official authority. He
was also opinionative, impatient of opposition, and restive
and even explosive in temper. So long as the Colony was at
peace, he showed dignity and sound judgment in his conduct;
but when the civil commotions began, he lost every attribute
of the statesman and even of the gentleman, and became, at
times, a demon of cruelty, only pardonable on the theory that
his sanity had been destroyed by the terrible stress imposed
on his intellect and passions.

Berkeley's first act as governor was to appoint Matthews,
Pierce, and Menifee to seats in his council, although these men
had been up to the neck in the expulsion of Harvey. His next
step was to adopt a frank and conciliatory attitude towards
the Assembly by declaring himself in harmony with that body
in their disapproval of the proposal to reestablish the political
overlordship of the Old Company, which was now brought
up by George Sandys. And as the King was also hostile to
the suggestion, this project was in a short time permanently
dropped.

During the Parliamentary rule, it was frequently said to
Berkeley's credit that he had never endeavored to use the
General Court to advance his own purposes. In 1643, he
signed a bill that authorized appeals from the decisions of
that court, over which he presided, to the General Assembly.
This was a popular measure, which necessarily diminished the

importance of the quarter courts. He would not have exhibited
this liberal spirit after the Restoration. During his second
administration, he was charged with packing the seats of
the county benches with his creatures; and he also showed a
disposition to encroach on the Assembly's exclusive right of
taxation. But that he bore himself tactfully and discreetly
during his first administration was proven by the General
Assembly's generosity in presenting him with two houses and
levying a special tax for his benefit to make good a default
in his allowance by the English treasury owing to the civil
commotions.

Berkeley was always conspicuous for courage. He first
displayed this quality after his arrival in Virginia, in the war
which followed the massacre of 1644. During the long peace
preceding that year, the older parts of the Colony had become
too populous to be threatened by Indian uprisings, should they
occur elsewhere. The massacre of 1644 fell on the frontier
settlements alone. Those south of the Powhatan River suffered
most. Berkeley in person led the expedition against
the Nansemond and the other tribes seated in that region, who
were pursued into the swamps and pine forests, whilst their
maize fields and vegetable gardens were invaded and cut or
trampled down. Opechancanough was at the bottom of the
massacre. He was now a very old man, and so infirm that he
had lost the power to raise his eyelids, but his cunning in contriving
a devilish plot was as acute as in 1622. He was captured,
and whilst in the custody of a guard was shot in the
back and killed. Necotowance, his successor, entered into a
treaty with the government at Jamestown, in which, as a sign
of submission, he agreed to pay an annual tribute of beaver
skins; but what was more important, he consented to transfer
the title to all the lands situated between the modern York
and James Rivers, from their falls down to the sea. Thirty-two
years of peace followed; and the treaty would not have
been broken then had it not been for the intrusion of the
Susquehannocks.

It is possible that Berkeley's indisposition to return to
England, and his complete identification with the Colony, was,
during his first administration at least, to be attributed, in
some degree, to the turmoil which accompanied the relentless
war then going on in the mother country. As the fortunes of
the cavaliers grew darker, many of them emigrated to Virginia,
where they found in the governor a sympathetic companion
and a violent loyalist. The fervent allegiance of the
Virginians was not shaken by the repeated defeats of the
King. As early as 1642, all persons convicted of speaking
words of detraction about him and his queen, were banished
from the Colony. By this year, the Battle of Edgehill had
been fought. At no time was organized support of the cause
of Parliament given by any large body of citizens. In 1648,
the year before Charles's execution, when the throne lay in
ruin, a complaint was heard that the Governor and Council
had impressed soldiers by warrant without first obtaining the
General Assembly's consent. This action, it was claimed, was
an infringement on the liberties and rights of the people; but
the Assembly itself refused to consider the accusation, on the
ground that the officials attacked had derived their powers
directly from the King through repeated instructions to their
predecessors as well as to themselves; and that it was very
unbecoming in any one to fail to acknowledge the extraordinary
care and forethought shown by his Majesty in conferring
such a power on the Governor and Council, as, by means of it,
they had always been prepared to defend the Colony without
delay.

When the Virginians heard that Charles had been
beheaded, the General Assembly publicly denounced "the
treasonable principles and policies" of the triumphant party
in England which was responsible for the "crime" of his
death. This party, they said, was not satisfied with regicide,
but was systematically "aspersing the memory of the martyr,"
and was denying and scouting the "divine right of kings."
Any one in Virginia who should be reported as defending these

"flagrant and impious proceedings," should be taken as an
accessory after the act to the "murder" of the monarch; and
should anyone venture to cast reflections upon his conduct
during life, then that person was to be subject to such severe
penalties as the Governor and Council should impose. Any
man who questioned the right of Charles II to succeed to his
father's throne was to be arrested and punished as a traitor.

No dictate of prudence, no weak leaning towards a side
simply because it was victorious, was allowed to influence
these zealous supporters of the principle of royalty. The Civil
War had gone on too far away from Virginia to affect seriously
its inhabitants' welfare. Their material condition had
not been injured by battles, sieges, and raids at their very
doors, as had happened to their English kinsfolk, while the
political controversies involved in the contest between the
two antagonists were too remote to be grasped by them as
bearing on the well-being of all English subjects. So far as
the bulk of the people of the Colony could see, the King was
fighting for the preservation of his inherited prerogatives
against a vast multitude of rebels; and that spectacle, shocking
their loyal feelings, aroused their indignant sympathy in
his behalf.

All Berkeley's influence was exerted to confirm and spread
this sympathy. However serious his faults, he was not the
person to allow his impulses to be controlled by suggestions
that were wholly politic; indeed, he had no toleration for any
form of compromise; and in this great crisis, he omitted no
opportunity to express his detestation of the Roundheads and
his admiration of Charles's character and devotion to his person.
His influence was seconded by that of the large body of
cavaliers who had found an asylum in Virginia, where their
social accomplishments, experience in arms, and fidelity to the
throne, had given their convictions and sentiments extraordinary
weight.

Besides their personal loyalty to the King to make them
hostile to Parliament, the Virginians as a body were ardent

supporters of the Anglican Church. From the beginning, all
the governors had been instructed to uphold its forms and
doctrines; and not one had obeyed with more sympathy and
energy than Berkeley. He looked upon dissent as the shadow
of treason, and he never grew cold in the encouragement which
he gave to the passage of acts leveled at the Quakers and the
Puritans, and he never softened the sternness with which he
enforced them. The massacre of 1644 was openly interpreted
by these sects as the judgment of God upon the persecutions
which they had suffered for their religious principles. As late
as 1649, Edward Lloyd and Thomas Meares, commissioners
of Lower Norfolk County, and six other citizens of the same
high quality, were indicted as seditious secretaries because
they had refused to listen to the reading of the Book of Common
Prayer; and they were required to give bond that they
would appear before the Governor and Council sitting as an
ecclesiastical court in Jamestown. This instance discloses the
rigidity of the treatment of the Puritans as late as the year
of Charles's death on the scaffold.

It is a proof of the numerical weakness of this religious
body and the smallness of its aggressive influence, that, even
after the Cromwellians had beaten down all opposition in
England, there should be no movement in Virginia in sympathy
with the Parliamentary victory. By this time, there
had arisen in the Colony a large circle of small landowners,
recruited more especially from the ranks of those whose indentures
of service had expired. These men, as a rule, did not
think that their interests conflicted with the interests of their
wealthy neighbors; and they were quite as earnest supporters
of the old order of church and state as it formerly prevailed
in Virginia. They felt as a body that they were in the same
boat with the members of the higher social class, and there
was only room for friendship and cooperation. The fact that
the General Assembly, in 1648, created a small personal guard
for Berkeley is simply a proof that the assault of a single
fanatic was feared, but not an uprising on the part of many.

The Rebellion of 1676 demonstrated clearly that the mass of
common people were perfectly ready to spring to arms against
the upper class if the impulse to do so had taken possession of
their minds. Not even the headstrong Berkeley would have
dared to announce his purpose of defying Parliament with a
sword in his hand, had he not been aware that there stood
at his back representatives of every rank, who were practically
unanimous in supporting him in his proposed resistance.
Berkeley had a correct impression of the power of England—
its power in treasure, its power in ships, its power in soldiers.
He knew all this by what he had seen with his own eyes.
Standing there in the forest wilderness, with its sparse population,
its scattered homes, its lack of vessels of war, its small
supplies of ammunition and arms, its decayed fortifications,
its untrained militia, he defied the greatest general of the age
—Cromwell, and the most powerful body of men—the English
Parliament.

Parliament did not take up at once the gauge of battle
which Berkeley and the General Assembly had passionately
thrown at its feet. Its first act was statesmanlike rather
than warlike—it adopted a policy of blockade, a modern
method of great shrewdness. No foreign ship was to be permitted
to pass between the Capes; and no English ship either,
unless it carried a license from the Admiralty in London. As
Virginia was forced to look to the market overseas for the sale
of her tobacco and the purchase in return of all manufactured
supplies, the proposed screw would have been crushing had
it been enforceable. Berkeley apparently anticipated the
effects of the blockade with no apprehension. He was confident
that Dutch traders would be able to evade the barriers
and steal in; but, should he be mistaken after all, it was quite
practicable for the Virginian planters to give up the culture of
tobacco for the culture of wheat and maize, and to find substitutes
for English clothes in the product of their own looms.