William Berkeley (Monarchist World)

Sir William Berkeley was royal governor of Virginia from 1642 till 1677. Sir William Berkeley was a playwright, a soldier, a knight, though also a man of agricultural science. Chosen by Charles the 1st by the grace of God of England to replace Virginia's former company appointed governor after it became a Crown Colony. William's main aims as governor was to improve colonial safety as directed while also increasing the profits of the colonist. His efforts where largely successful with the Anglo-Pawhatan Wars ending in the Pawhatan Confederacy becoming a tributary state to the crown and his agricultural laws improving the wealth of Virginia. With less fear of native attacks and more money to spend Virginian colonist experienced a far better life then the struggles they had under company rule. Save for the Puritan population which under his governance faced persecution with many migrating to Maryland. During the English Civil War the Lord Governor Baltimore of Maryland fled to Virginia after protestants (such as the Puritans) captured the capital of St. Mary's City. The Lord Baltimore was able to return from Virginia to Maryland with a force to recapture the capital. Berkeley was a Virginian Cavalier, loyal to the crown and unlike the New England Colonial Governors did not face local uprisings marking Virginia as the most loyal of the colonies. His governance after the English Civil War is notable for attempting diminished Virginia's reliance on Tobacco which he despised. In 1650 Edward Digges, a former investor in the Virginia Company whose fourth son, Dudley, was Master of the Rolls for King Charles the 1st moved to Virginia and purchased a plantation. The governor's efforts at agricultural experimentation caught the newcomers attention and he found support form Sir Berkeley in the aim of creating Mulberry raised Silkworms as part of experimentation into the production of Silk in Virginia. Natives of the Pawhatan tribe, whose confederacy was a tributary state of the Crown, provided labor to this endeavor. Though after eight years the landholders of Virginia where becoming disenchanted with the prospect of growing Silk in Virginia. Even Berkeley faced such and Digges was left with little support from the Governor in regards to Silk Production as Berkeley moved on and Digges, with various Mulberry trees on his estate, continued to experiment though Tobacco became the estate's main source of income. Berkeley continued to enforce the Angelican Church's position in Virginia.