Frances Culpeper Berkeley

Frances Culpeper Stephens Berkeley Ludwell (baptized May 27, 1634 – ca. 1690/1695), most commonly styled Lady Frances Berkeley after her second marriage, was a leader of the Green Spring faction of Virginia politics in the seventeenth century and wife to three colonial governors.

Frances Culpeper was born in Hollingbourne, Kent. Her father was Thomas Culpeper, and her mother was Katherine St. Leger; her uncle was John Colepeper, 1st Baron Colepeper, and her brother was the John Culpeper who later led Culpeper's Rebellion. The youngest of her parents' five children, she was born into a family with numerous interests in the colony of Virginia; her father had become a member of the Virginia Company of London in 1623, and in 1649 was made one of the original patent-holders of the Northern Neck.

The year in which Frances arrived to the New World is unknown, although she is said to have come with her parents around 1650. She was in the colonies by 1652, in which year she married Samuel Stephens of Warwick County, Virginia. The couple had no children. Her husband became "Commander of the Southern Plantation" in 1662, serving in that role for two years; in 1667 he became governor of Albemarle, holding that position until dying in 1670. At his death she inherited a plantation, called Bolthrope or Boldrup, in Warwick County, a provision which had been agreed to before their marriage; unusually for a woman at the time she managed the estate herself instead of handing it over to a man. As there were no other heirs she received absolute possession of her husband's estate.

Within a few months of her husband's death Frances married again. Her new husband was Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia. Long admired, his popularity had waned by the time of his marriage, and he was ridiculed by many for taking a wife half his age. Even so, his union with Frances provided him with a closer alliance to a family with which he had long been aligned, and it increased her prestige appreciably, not least because she was now connected to most, if not all, the important families in the colony. The couple lived at Green Spring Plantation, one of the finest houses in seventeenth-century Virginia. Described as "vigorous and energetic", she became a staunch defender of her husband, taking part in the events that led to Bacon's Rebellion, which was led by a distant relative of hers; she traveled to England and petitioned to the King on Berkeley's behalf. When commissioners were sent to investigate her husband's activities, she had the "common hangman mounted as an improvised postillion" to lead them away from the house. That she wielded considerable influence can be seen by the fact that she was able to obtain a pardon for one Jones, condemned by the governor for his participation in the rebellion, at the request of Sir Francis Moryson. Lady Berkeley's role in public life was widely known at the time, and some believed that the errors made by her husband in his last years could be laid at her feet instead.

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