But the Assembly persisted in its determination to make him Governor. If he scrupled to promise to serve under the enemies of the Crown, that promise would not be required of him. Let him be Governor of Virginia, by their authority only, and only so long as the confusion in England continued. If a new Protector, or a new Commonwealth gained the ascendency, and demanded Virginia's submission, he might resign. If England returned to its obedience to the Throne, he could petition the King for a new commission. To this Berkeley assented. "Wee have all," he said, in another short address, "had great and pressing feares of offending a Supreame power which neither by present possession is soe, nor has a publiquely confessed politique capacity to be a Supream power. I alsoe, Mr. Speaker, have my pressing feares too, and I am seriously afraid to offend him, who by all Englishmen is confessed to be in a naturall politique capacity of being a Supreame power." He therefore, he said, made this declaration in the presence of God, that if any government became fixed in London, he would immediately lay down his commission. When this was recorded and they were still of the same mind, he was ready most thankfully to serve them.[377] Thus did Sir William Berkeley a second time become Governor of Virginia. It must have been with trepidation that this man, who had so often denied the right of any officer to serve save by the King's commands, accepted now this commission from the hands of the people. The stern hater of republicanism was becoming the head of an independent little republic. For such Virginia was and must continue to be until there should appear in England some fixed government to which it could submit. "I am," Berkeley wrote Governor Stuyvesant of New Amsterdam, "but a servant of the assembly's; neither do they arrogate any power to themselves, further than the miserable distractions of England force them to. For when God shall be pleased in his mercy to take away and dissipate the unnatural diversions of their native country, they will immediately return to their own professed obedience."[378]