Forget Pocahontas! Seventeenth Century Virginia’s  real feminist icon was an 
intelligent, ambitious, and well-connected blonde who  married three Royal 
Governors and left an indelible mark upon the colony’s  political history. For 
more than three decades, “Lady” Frances Culpeper  Stephens Berkeley Ludwell 
was unquestionably Virginia’s  most politically powerful woman. An astute 
political operator in her own right,  she used her high-level contacts in London  
and Virginia  to bolster her husbands’ careers and her personal estate. Her 
influence upon her  second husband, Governor Sir William Berkeley, was so great 
that some historians  have blamed her for the outbreak of Bacon’s Rebellion. 
Following Berkeley's  death, she led the “Green Spring Faction’s” resistance 
against London’s  efforts to impose more direct bureaucratic control upon 
Virginia. 
 
Daniel Lovelace,  President
The Friends of the National Park Service for  Green Spring, Inc.
 
 
                 

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