In 1642, there came to Virginia as governor of the colony Sir William Berkeley, then almost forty years of age, when John Stevens was only seventeen. Berkeley was a man of charming manners, proverbially 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.