roverbially polite,
and he delighted the Virginians, who had a weakness for courtliness. He
belonged to an ancient English family, and believed in monarchy as a
devotee believes in his saint, "and he brought to the little capital at
Jamestown all the graces, amenities, and well-bred ways which at that
time were characteristic of the cavaliers. He was a cavalier of the
cavaliers, taking the word to signify an adherent of monarchy and the
established church," and thoroughly hated anything resembling
republicanism. For his king and church, this smiling gentleman, with his
easy and friendly air, was going to fight like a tiger or a ruffian.
Under his glove of velvet was a hand of iron, which would fall
inexorably alike on the New England Puritans and the followers of Bacon.
With the courage of his convictions, he was ready to deal out banishment
for the dissenters; shot and the halter for rebels. He lived on his
estate of about a thousand acres at Greenspring, not far from Jamestown.
"Here he had plate, servants, carriages, seventy horses, fifteen hundred
apple trees, besides apricots, peaches, pears, quinces and mellicottons.
When, in the stormy times, the poor cavaliers flocked to Virginia to
find a place of refuge, he entertained them after a royal fashion in
this Greenspring Manor house. As to the Virginians, they were always
welcome, so that they did not belong to the independents, haters of the
church and king."

From the very first, John Stevens did not like Governor Berkeley and in
a short time learned that he was a tyrant. Berkeley issued his
proclamation against the Puritan pastors, prohibiting their teaching or
preaching publicly or privately.

John Smith Stevens participated in the Indian war in 1644, and saw
Opechancanough, at this time almost a hundred years of age, captured and
brought to Jamestown, where he requested his captors to hold open his
eyes, that he might see and upbraid Sir William Berkeley for making a
public exhibition of him. A short hour afterward the aged chieftain was
treacherously wounded by his guard.

In the year 1648, John Stevens married Dorothe Collier, the daughter of
a clergyman of the church of England. This naturally united him to the
cavalier or church party, while his mother, brother and sister were
Puritans. Sometimes John thought he had the best wife living, at others
he was almost persuaded that she was intolerable. She was a beautiful
brunette, with great dark eyes which s