Rarely do I disagree with the historical judgments of Fred Fausz or Jon
Kukla, but I must respectfully dissent from their briefs for William
Claiborne as the most significant Virginia colonist of the seventeenth
century. That distinction clearly belongs to Sir William Berkeley, whose
record of achievement surpasses Claiborne's by some considerable distance.
To be sure, the twom men shared common attributes. Both made themselves
into Virginians. Both men sought in Virginia places and preferments that
they could not achieve in England. Berkeley also had an Atlantic trading
network, and it was arguably more extensive than Claiborne's which was
centered on London, whereas Berkeley's extended to continental Europe as
well as New England, the Caribbean, and the British Isles. Berkeley's
Indian policy differed not all that much from Claiborne's, and after 1646
it kept relations between the two peoples reasonably quiet. (Of course,
Berkeley could do little to stem the tide of English immigration that
swept over the reserve lands north of the York.)They rivalled one another,
though they were never enemies. Berkeley got the better of Claiborne in
the 1640s, whereas Claiborne outed Berkeley in 1652, only to help bring
him back as governor in 1660. Thereafter, Claiborne was retired from
public life and remained mainly in seculsion til his death, though Berkely
advance his sons in public life.

Sir William governed longer than any other chief executive, colonial or
modern, he set in train developments that translated the General Assembly
from a corporate appendage to a little Parliament, and he erected the
offices of attorney general and auditor general. (His encouragement of
bicameralism had profound implications for the rise of Virginia's self-
governing tradition.) He abetted the emergence of the great planters and
became one of them. Moreover he was one of the largest landholders in the
colony, and if one includes his eighth share in the Carolina proprietary,
he ranked with the greatest landowners anywhere in English North America.
In the 1660s he spearheaded urban renewal at Jamestown and touted
diversification of the economy. He came within a few whiskers of
succeeding with the latter goal, but its failure assured that a single-
crop, bound labor based, plantation agricultural base would be the norm
for centuries to come. His other great failure--bumbling into Bacon's
Rebellion--contributed to a vigorous reassertion of royal authority in the
colony after 1677 with the result that Virginia was cut more closely to
the Stuart model of empire. Consequently, the General Assembly lost much
of the autonomy it had enjoyed from the 1640s to the 1670s. And whereas
the politics of accommodation drove the relationship between Berkeley, his
councillors, and the burgesses, confrontation generally dictated the
responses of royal governors-general and colonial leaders to one another
from 1677 to the Revolution.

In short, Sir William stands ahead of Claiborne as the most significant
seventeenth-century English Virginian.

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