Governor Berkeley Quotes

With its emphasis on stability and Christian unity, colonial Virginia was not a receptive place for religious dissenters. Catholic clergy were banned, and in 1640 the assembly required all officials to take an oath of allegiance and supremacy to the king and the Anglican church, effectively banning Catholics from office holding. Throughout the seventeenth century, colonial leaders harassed clergy and lay people with Puritan leanings. The assembly ordered all dissenters (Puritans) out of the colony in 1642, with Governor William Berkeley driving the more ardent believers from the colony several years later.

One hundred years before the present government existed, a powerful leader, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, stated his views in clear, unflinching terms. "I thank God," he said, that "there are no free schools nor printing [in this land]. For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing hath divulged them...God save us from both!

Governor Ronald Reagan promptly sent in the National Guard—and growing legions of the young promptly decided that all the rules were off, their allegiance to established institutions severed, the cement of loyalty dissolved. By early 1969, circulation figures for the counterculture press shot upward; the readership of the weekly Berkeley Barb rose from a mere five thousand four years earlier to nearly 100,000, while New York’s East Village Other soared to 65,000. And a Yankelovich poll found that 20 percent of American college students identified more with Che Guevara than with presidential candidates Nixon and Humphrey.1

Governor Berkeley, in his seventies, tired of holding office, wrote wearily about his situation: “How miserable that man is that Governes a People where six parts of seaven at least are Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed.