Planting an Asylum for Religion: Berkeley's Bermuda Scheme and the Transmission of Virtue in the Eighteenth‐Century Atlantic World

Following the aftermath of the South Sea bubble, George Berkeley grew disenchanted with British morality and turned his attention to a new project: a missionary college in Bermuda. Not only did he personally lobby friends and government officials, but he also worked tirelessly to persuade the public of his scheme's value. To this end, he published his plan under the title A Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in Our Foreign Plantations (1724) and at the height of this enthusiasm wrote his only (existent) poem “America, or the Muse's Refuge” (1725/26). These verses were premised upon a classical commonplace, the notion of a translatio imperii and translatio religionis: the belief in the constant westward migration of empire and religion that provided the foundation of his plan. Through a contextual reading of these two pieces, this paper examines Berkeley's contributions to early eighteent‐century missionary activity in the Atlantic world.