ce, said to him: "Had it
been my fortune to take Sir William Berkley prisoner, I would have
disdained to make a show of him." He, however, had made a show of
Captain Smith when he was a prisoner. About a fortnight after
Opechancanough's capture, one of his guards, for some private revenge,
basely shot him in the back. Languishing awhile of the wound, he died at
Jamestown, and was probably buried there. His death brought about a
peace with the Indian savages, which endured for many years without
interruption.

Sir William Berkley left Virginia for England in June, 1644, and
returned in June, 1645, his place being filled during his absence by
Richard Kemp.

The spirit of freedom long gaining ground, like a smothered fire, began
now to flame up and burst forth in England. Charles the First,
incomparably superior to his father in manners, habits, and tastes--a
model of kingly grace and dignity, yet was a more determined and
dangerous enemy to the rights of the people. On the 19th of March, 1642,
having escaped from insurgent London, he reached the ancient capital,
York, and on the twenty-fifth day of August raised his standard, under
inauspicious omens, at Nottingham. The royal forces under Prince Rupert
suffered a disastrous defeat at Marston Moor, July 2d, 1644; and while
Sir William Berkley was crossing the Atlantic, the king was overthrown
at Naseby, on the 4th of June, 1645. In this eventful year, and so
disastrous to the king, of whom the Berkleys were such staunch
supporters, Gloucester, the chief city of the county where they resided,
and which had been ravaged and plundered by Rupert, was now in the hands
of the parliamentary forces, and Cromwell had been early in the year
convoying ammunition thither.[204:A] A sad time for the visit of the
loyal Berkley!

During the troubles in England the correspondence of the colony was
interrupted, supplies reduced, trade obstructed; and the planters looked
forward with solicitude to the issue of such alarming events.

In the mean while Lord Baltimore, taking advantage of the weakness of
the crown, had shown some contempt for its authority, and had drawn upon
himself the threat of a _quo warranto_.

Early in 1645, Clayborne, profiting by the distractions of the mother
country, and animated by an indomitable, or, as his enemies alleged, a
turbulent spirit, and by a sense of wrongs long unavenged, at the head
of a band of insurgents, expelled Leonard Calvert, deputy governo