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.
In the year 1648, John Stevens married Dorothe Collier, the daughter of a clergyman of the church of England.

This naturally united him to the cavalier or church party, while his mother, brother and sister were Puritans.