BERKELEY, SIR William, American colo nial governor: b. near London about 1610; d. 13 July 1677. His father and brother were colo nial proprietors. Graduating from Oxford 1629, he traveled on the Continent for a year; was appointed a commissioner of Canada 1632 and won a high reputation there. In 1641 he was made governor of Virginia, and arriving in 1642, was for a time very popular. He ex perimented in the cultivation of rice, cotton, indigo, hemp, flax and silk, the manufacture of potash and naval stores and the cutting and exporting of masts; pleased the Royalist party by expelling the New England Puritans in 1643, and all parties by capturing the Indian chief Opechancanough in 1644, after a series of In dian massacres. Always with an eye to profit, however, he received from the King a monop oly of the fur trade. During the English revolution he adhered to the royal side and offered an asylum in Virginia to exiled or dis satisfied Royalists; many hundreds availed themselves of this. When Cromwell felt strong enough he sent a fleet (in 1651) to bring him back for punishment; but Berkeley suc ceeded in making certain terms by mingled and finesse and was allowed to retire in safety to his plantation, though deprived of his office. When the Restoration began to seem probable, the colonists elected Berkeley as gov ernor to gain favor in such event; Berkeley accepted it provisionally and Charles II on ac cession confirmed it. But in this second term all Berkeley's evil side showed itself, till it ended in the atrocities of 1676. Besides ex pelling and confiscating the goods of Puritans and Quakers, a measure popular at the time, he frowned on the establishment of schools and absolutely refused to have a printing-press set up, as making people too censorious of their superiors. He formed a council of the wealthier planters and having obtained during the spasm of Restoration loyalty in 1662 an ultra-royalist house of burgesses, would not issue writs for another election for 14 years, simply adjourning annually the "Long Assem bly,'> as it came to be called; and in 1670 abol ished universal suffrage, substituting a property qualification, purely as a precaution for the future, as no elections were held for years be fore and after. These, however, were only
means to the end of profiting himself and his friends and the rapacious crew of civil officers sent over by Charles to quiet the people's importunities. Heavy taxes and fees imposed on the colony drove them to desperation, so that as early as 1667 they were ripe for revolt. Besides Berkeley's share in various extortions, he had one monopoly which led directly to the catastrophe, that of the Indian trade, which he gained by under hand means. The colony allowed no trade with the Indians without license; Berkeley there fore licensed a small number of men to trade in furs with them, which secretly included liq uor, firearms and other things and exacted a third of the profits. It wa4 believed to be this gain which led him to refuse permission to the colonists to protect thetnselves against the In dians in 1675-76, while hundreds of them were being massacred and tortured and scores of plantations laid waste, and to dissolve force after force assembled to protect them. How Nathaniel Bacon chastised the Indians in spite of him, was proscribed for it, forced into open rebellion, drove Berkeley into retreat and burned his capital, and died at the moment of his victory, is told under 'Bacon's Rebel lion.' Berkeley's soul was as full of senile fury as it had been of senile avarice; he slaughtered right and left, hanging a score of victims with such vindictive haste and ruf fianly insult that the assembly remonstrated, and the royal commissioners, who came in January to investigate the condition of the colony, made a report that led the King to re move him, with the comment, °The old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I for the murder of my father?' He sailed 27 April, his departure celebrated with bonfires and salutes of cannon; and ex pected to justify himself to the King and re turn. But Charles kept postponing an inter view and in a few weeks Berkeley died—of chargin, it was believed. He wrote 'The Lost Lady) (1638) and (A Discourse and View of Virginia) (1663).