Thanks! I believe this was after Berkeley returned to the  
governorship following Bacon's Rebellion. The Berkeley who came back  
was a much hardened man, who wanted all these ideas implemented to  
keep [he hoped] the lower sorts in their place so there'd never be  
another rebellion. Earlier Va. had been, as are most frontier  
societies, a much more egalitarian place [relatively speaking]. After  
Berkeley's "reforms" were moderated later, Va. was never the again  
the egalitarian place she had been. That frontier sensibility was  
gone, replaced by the entrenched FFVs and a try to recreate the rigid  
British class system. Berkeley's repressions, hasty trials and  
punishments of the Bacon's Rebellion plotters was so severe he was  
recalled to England and he then retired to his Va. plantation.

Nancy

-------
I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.

--Daniel Boone



On Dec 5, 2008, at 9:54 AM, William Milam wrote:

> "Bound Away: Virginia and the Western Movement"; David Fischer and  
> James C.
> Kelly (2000), page 103:
>
> "In the Berkeley era Virginia had been a closed society. Freedom of  
> Speech,
> press, and religion were narrowly constrained. The repressive  
> spirit of its
> government was captured  in Sir William Berkeley's immortal  
> diatribe: "I
> thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we  
> shall not
> have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience,  
> and heresy,
> and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, the  
> libels against
> the best government. God keep us from both!"
>
> "Berkeley's outburst was not a private prejudice. It became an  
> official
> policy in the colony, actively shared by other governors and  
> enforced for
> many years. In 1682, for example, Berkeley's successor, Thomas  
> Culpeper,
> second Baron of Thoresway, and his council severely chastised a  
> printer
> named John Buckner, who had appeared in the colony and published the
> colony's laws. Buckner was forbidden to print anything at all. Not for
> another 50 years would the laws of the colony appear in print. The  
> next
> governor, Lord Howard of Effingham, was given instructions that  
> bound him to
> allow no person  to use a printing press "on any occasion whatsoever".
>
> "The growth of a closed society in an open environment was not  
> unique to
> Virginia. In most colonies American conditions caused European  
> leaders to
> become more repressive, not less so....The Puritans, for example,  
> became
> cruelly intolerant on the New England frontier, while Puritans in Old
> England were moving in the opposite direction."
>
> William Milam
>
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