One of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of Carolina, as governor of Virginia he implemented policies that bred dissent among the colonists and sparked Bacon's Rebellion.

Charles II also named Berkeley one of the eight Lords Proprietors of Carolina, in recognition of his loyalty to the Stuarts during the English Civil War.

As governor, Berkeley oversaw the implementation of a policy known as partus sequitur ventrem, which mandated that all babies born to enslaved parents take the legal status of their mother.

As proprietor of Green Spring Plantation in James City County, he experimented with activities such as growing silkworms as part of his efforts to expand the tobacco-based economy.

[2]: p6  His informal education consisted of observing his elders; from them he learned "the moves that governed the larger English society and his privileged place in it".

He began his studies at Queen's College in the footsteps of his forebears, but quickly transferred to St. Edmund Hall, a "throwback to medieval times".

[2]: p8  While the identity of Berkeley's tutor is unsure, his effect upon the boy showed through William's "disciplined intellect and steady appetite for knowledge".

[3]: 331 Arriving at Jamestown in 1642, Berkeley erected Green Spring House on a tract of land west of the capital, where he experimented with alternatives to tobacco.

[1] It was at Green Spring that he planted such diverse crops as corn, wheat, barley, rye, rape[seed], tobacco,[4] oranges, lemons, grapes,[4]: 66  sugar and silk.

[4]: 68  Berkeley produced flax, fruits, potash, silk, and spirits which he exported through a commercial network that joined Green Spring to markets in North America, the West Indies, Great Britain, and Holland.

After the king was beheaded he dispatched his secretary of state Richard Lee I to the Netherlands to secure an extension of his office from the Crown Prince.

That document proved worthless because Parliament dispatched a small fleet to the colony, and the governor, unable to offer resistance, was ultimately forced to resign his authority.

[9] For Berkeley, the path towards Virginia's prosperity was fourfold: a diverse economy; free trade; a close-knit colonial society; and autonomy from London.

Though he was unable to foresee the eventual establishment of such schools, he held that they would bring "disobedience, heresy, and sects into the world," and were for such reasons destructive to society.

"[1] Bacon unexpectedly led 500 armed men into Jamestown and compelled the frightened legislators to appoint him general before he marched away in search of the Indians.

His extortion of a general's commission turned a dispute over Indian policy into a duel to the death over who would control Virginia: Bacon or Berkeley.