Burwell Berkeley was among the women of the early 18th century that sought a marriage based upon her feelings of love and affection—for a man of refined manners, good character, and emotional health—over political and financial status.
[3] Abigail, the niece and heiress of General Nathaniel Bacon's estate,[2] was Lewis Burwell's first wife, with whom they had four sons and six daughters.
[4] She received her first love letter from 44-year-old Governor Francis Nicholson, written on the night before Valentine's Day.
He wrote to her that, as her friend and lover, he "most cordially and earnestly recommend to you to receive the most holy Sacrament Godwilling next Easter."
[7] The document focused on the Governor's acts of "injustice, oppression, and insolence" towards the councilors and "other public abuses", which were not detailed.
[7] At a time when leading Virginians were searching for a dignified regional identity and attempting to check the power of the governor, Burwell's refusal of Nicholson did much both to legitimize the Virginia elite’s grievances against him and to provide compelling evidence of his despotic and dishonorable tendencies.
In exercising her prerogative to choose her own husband, surely the most public and free act of her short life, Lucy Burwell became, in the annals of Virginia folklore, a symbol of regional resistance to the abuse of power.Burwell and Edmund Berkeley (ca.
1665–1718),[3] the son of Mary Mann and Edmund Berkeley of Gloucester County,[2] married on December 1, 1703.
More specifically, advice manuals of the early eighteenth century advised selecting partners who were refined, with good manners, moral character, intelligence and a nice temperament — who they were attracted to.
[13] Lucy and her brothers and sisters married into established families in New Kent, which influenced the politics of Colonial Virginia at that time.
Edmund Berkeley added an epitaph to her gravestone about their marriage: She never in all the time she lived with her Husband gave him so much as once cause to be displeased with Her.