Three days after I asked his leave to goe home, hee sullenly Answered, you may goe, and since that time, I thank God, I never saw or heard from him.
Bacon’s perilous situation.
This interesting dialogue reveals the nature of the situation into which Bacon had drifted. As the days went by, he could hardly fail to see that the king was more likely to take Berkeley’s view of the case than his. According to that view the deliverer of Virginia from the Indians was a proscribed rebel who must “fly or hang for it.” There was little hope for Bacon in “seasonable submission.” He would, therefore, consider it safer and better for Virginia to hold out until the king could be induced to take Bacon’s view of the case; or failing this, it might still be possible to wear out the king’s troops and achieve independence for Virginia, with the aid of the discontented people in the neighbouring colonies. These were the speculations of a man whom circumstances were making desperate, and the effect which they wrought upon John Goode was likely to be repeated with many who had hitherto loyally followed his fortunes.
Berkeley takes the offensive.
Thus far Bacon’s fighting had been against Indians. His quarrel with the governor had been confined to fulminations. Now the two men were to come into armed collision and give Virginia a brief taste of civil war. Bacon sent Giles Bland, “a gentleman of an active and stirring disposition,” with four armed vessels, to arrest Berkeley in Accomac, but Colonel Philip Ludwell, aided by treachery, succeeded in capturing Bland with his flotilla. Bland was put in irons, and one ship’s captain was hanged for an example. Meanwhile Berkeley was enlisting troops by promising as rewards the estates of all the gentlemen who had taken the oath at Middle Plantation. He also sought to win over the indentured servants of gentlemen fighting under Bacon by promising to give them the estates of their masters. Many longshoremen also were enrolled. Having in these ways scraped together about 1,000 men, the governor sailed up the river to Jamestown and took possession of the place, from which Lawrence and Drummond fled in the nick of time.
The white aprons.
When this news reached Bacon it found him at West Point, with the work of subduing the red men practically finished. Not four months had yet elapsed since the first attack on his plantation. It was clearly no ordinary young man that had done that summer’s arduous work. Now he advanced upon Jamestown, and made his headquarters in his adversary’s comfortable mansion at Green Spring. Sir William had thrown an earthwork across the neck of the promontory, and Bacon began building a parallel. It is said that he compelled a number of ladies in white aprons—wives of leading Berkeleyans—to stand upon the works, and sent a message to the governor not to fire upon these guardian angels. “The poor gentlewomen were mightily astonished,” says the chronicle, “and neither were their bands void of amazement at this subtle invention.”[54] The incident is an ugly spot in that brief career. One would gladly disbelieve the story, but our contemporary authority for it seems unimpeachable, and is friendly withal to Bacon.
Bacon’s speech.
The speech made by the young commander to his men at Green Spring before the final assault is a good specimen of his eloquence: “Gentlemen and Fellow Soldiers, how I am transported with gladness to find you thus unanimous, bold and daring, brave and gallant. You have the victory before the fight, the conquest before the battle.... Your hardiness will invite all the country along as we march to come in and second you.... The ignoring of their actions cannot but so much reflect upon their spirit, as they will have no courage left to fight you. I know you have the prayers and well wishes of all the people in Virginia, while the others are loaded with their curses. Come on, my hearts of gold; he that dies in the field lies in the bed of honour!”[55]
Burning of Jamestown.