Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt (c. 1717 – 15 October 1770) was a British Tory politician and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Virginia from 1768 to 1770, when he died in office.

[1][2] While serving as rector at the College of William & Mary, Berkeley endowed the creation of the Botetourt Medal, an award to incentivize student scholarship.

[3]: 147–148  After his death, the Virginia General Assembly commissioned Richard Hayward to produce Lord Botetourt, a marble statue depicting Berkeley that stood in the Capitol in Williamsburg.

[i] Considered a staunch Tory, Berkeley's fortunes were boosted considerably on the accession of George III in 1760, when he was appointed a Groom of the Bedchamber and in 1762 (until 1766) Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire.

When William Champion expanded his copper-smelting works at Warmley in 1761, he proposed to local coal owners, also including Charles Whittuck of Hanham Hall and Charles Bragge later Lord Bathurst, that they would supply his works with coal as a monopoly, excluding competition from the other local copper and brass makers, in exchange for partnerships in his new Warmley Company.

Other local landowners and bankers, including Botetourt's coal viewer Charles Arthur, held smaller holdings but the company was under-capitalised; a planned share capital of £50,000 had only been subscribed to £29,000.

[8] Efforts were made to re-organise the company in order to bring in more funds by making the existing shares transferable and so saleable through the stock market, but these were complicated, long-winded and had to be carried out in secrecy from the competitors.

In a letter addressed to Berkeley dated 23 December 1768, Berkeley received a petition from forty signatories requesting for leave to take up and survey forty-five thousand acres of land lying on the eastern side of the Ohio River on the lower side of the Little Kanawha River having lately been recognized by the Six Nations of Indians.

The Capital of Colonial Virginia was located in Williamsburg from 1699 until 1780, but at the urging of Governor Thomas Jefferson was moved to Richmond for security reasons during the American Revolution.

Barring a brief period during the Civil War when it was moved to the Public Asylum for safety, it stood in the College Yard until 1958 when it was removed for protection from the elements, and then in 1966 was installed in the new Earl Gregg Swem Library, in the new Botetourt Gallery.