Frances Stephens Berkeley Ludwell, 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.

Sir William Berkeley was an English colonial administrator who served as the governor of Virginia from 1660 to 1677. One of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of Carolina, as governor of Virginia he implemented policies that bred dissent among the colonists and sparked Bacon's Rebellion. A favourite of King Charles I, the king first granted him the governorship in 1642. Berkeley was unseated following the execution of Charles I, but his governorship was restored by King Charles II in 1660.