e in me to do it, without their knowledge or assent. We shall
very shortly meet again, and then, if to them you signify your
desires, I shall labor all I can to get you a satisfactory
answer.

"I am, sir, your humble servant,
"WILLIAM BERKLEY.

"Virginia, August 20th, 1660."

Peter Stuyvesant, the last of the Dutch governors of New Amsterdam,
within a few years was dispossessed by a small English squadron, and the
captured colony was retained. Sir William Berkley's letter was written
nearly three months after the actual restoration, and yet, not having
received intelligence of it, he alludes to the English government as in
a state of interregnum, and writes not one word in present recognition
of his majesty Charles the Second; on the contrary, he expressly avows
himself a servant of the assembly.

Tea was introduced into England about this time; the East India Company
made the king a formal present of two pounds and two ounces.[247:A]

The address of the Parliament and General Monk to Charles the Second,
then at Breda, in Holland, was carried over by Lord Berkley, of Berkley
Castle. On the eighth of May Charles was proclaimed in England king, and
he returned in triumph to London on the twenty-ninth of that month,
being his birth-day. The restored monarch transmitted a new commission,
dated July the 31st, 1660, at Westminster, to his faithful adherent Sir
William Berkley. He had remained in Virginia during the Commonwealth of
England under various pretexts, and it is probable that he kept up a
secret correspondence with refugee royalists, and it is said that he
even invited Charles to come over to Virginia. This tradition, however,
is without proof or plausibility; had the exiled Charles sought refuge
in Virginia, an English frigate would have found it easy to make him a
prisoner. Virginia would have presented few attractions to the royal
profligate; and it could have hardly been a matter of regret to the
Virginians that he never came here. Sir William Berkley's letter of
acknowledgment, written in March, 1661, is extravagantly loyal. He
apologizes for having accepted office from the assembly thus: "It was no
more, may it please your majesty, than to leap over the fold to save
your majesty's flock, when your majesty's enemies of that fold had
barred up the lawful entrance into it, and enclosed the wolves of schism
and reb