Norborne Berkeley was born about 1717, in England. He was the only son of John Symes Berkeley of Stoke Gifford, Gloucestershire by his second wife Elizabeth, the daughter and coheiress of Walter Norborne of Calne, Wiltshire.
He was sprung from the family which, in Sir William Berkeley, had already furnished the colony of Virginia with one governor. It was not until 1764 that he acquired his title.
Botetourt served as colonel of the Gloucestershire militia and as a member of Parliament.
In 1768, he was appointed a governor of Virginia, and unlike his predecessors subsequent to Howard, he went out to the colony in person, instead of sending a deputy to perform his duties. He brought over with him, for gala occasions, a resplendent coach and a team of cream-white Hanoverian horses, a present to him from the Duke of Cumberland.
Disembarking at Hampton, he journeyed to Williamsburg overland, and was received on its outskirts by a concourse of citizens; the town at night was illuminated, and a grand banquet in his honor was given. A eulogistic ode was also composed and published in the Gazette. Botetourt promptly summoned the General Assembly, and, dressed in a light red coat, decorated with gold braiding, drove to the Capitol in his glittering coach, drawn by his Hanoverian horses in their silver-mounted harness the whole a counterpart of King George's equipage at the opening of Parliament. And it was also observed that the Governor, in delivering the address, imitated the mannerisms of his royal master when reading his speech from the throne.
But the burgesses were not so awed by all this state as to refrain from passing resolutions upholding the colonists' rights, which had recently been grossly violated by the transportation of Americans oversea's to be tried by English juries. So frankly did they express themselves that Botetourt summoned them to the council chamber, and having rebuked them for their boldness, dissolved them as a body.
But most of the burgesses reassembled in the Raleigh Tavern and adopted a resolution, offered by Washington, but really drafted by Mason, that they would neither import nor buy any article that was subject to a parliamentary tax. When the general tax was repealed by Parliament, the tax on tea was retained.
The merchants of the colony, in concert with the burgesses, at a meeting at Williamsburg formed an association which bound its members to purchase no tea, no British manufactures, and no slaves, imported into the colony in British vessels, until all the regulations subjecting colonial imports to a tax had been revoked.
It is said that Botetourt was so much mortified by his inability to restore good feeling between the colony and the mother country, after these causes of difference arose, that he sank into a fever and died.
Norborne Berkeley is known as a royal governor of the colony of Virginia. His administration was, on the whole, so beneficent that, after his death, two statues also adorn the campus of The College of William and Mary were erected. Gloucester County, Virginia has an elementary school named for the governor. Both Richmond, Virginia and Norfolk, Virginia have streets named in his honor. Botetourt County, Virginia, was named in Botetourt's honor. Lord Botetourt High School in the unincorporated town of Daleville in Botetourt County, Virginia, is also named for him, as is the Botetourt Dorm Complex at The College of William and Mary.
Norborne Berkeley Botetourt never married and left no direct heirs.
