Sufferers at Bacon’s hands.
The governor’s motley force was indeed no match for these determined men. In the desultory fighting that ensued about Jamestown he was badly defeated and at last fled again to Accomac. Jamestown remained at Bacon’s mercy, and he burned it to the ground, that it might no longer “harbour the rogues.” We are told that Lawrence and Drummond took the lead in this work by applying the torch to their own houses with their own hands. At Green Spring an “oath of fidelity” was drawn up, which was taken voluntarily by many people and forced upon others. Bacon seems now to have shown more severity than formerly in sending men to prison and seizing their property. One deserter he shot, but from bloodthirstiness he was notably free. Among the gentlemen who suffered most at his hands were Richard Lee and Sir Henry Chichely, who were kept several weeks in prison, Philip and Thomas Ludwell, Nicholas Spencer and Daniel Parke, Robert Beverley and Philip Lightfoot, whose estates were at various times plundered. John Washington and others who were denounced as “delinquents” saw their corn and tobacco, cattle and horses, impressed and carried away. Colonel Augustine Warner, another great-grandfather of George Washington, “was plundered as much as any, and yet speaks little of his losses, though they were very great.”[56] Among the sufferers appears “the good Queen of Pamunkey,” who was “driven, out into the wild woods and there almost famished, plundered of all she had, her people taken prisoners and sold; the queen was also robbed of her rich watchcoat for which she had great value, and offered to redeem at any rate.” The next paragraph in the commissioners’ report is delightful: “We could not but present her case to his Majesty, who, though he may not at present so well or readily provide remedies or rewards for the other worthy sufferers, yet since a present of small price may highly oblige and gratify this poor Indian Queen, we humbly supplicate his Majesty to bestow it on her.”
Bacon and his cousin.
One of the accusations against Bacon was that to him a good Indian meant a dead Indian, so that he did not take the trouble to discriminate between friends and foes. But what shall we say when we find him plundering his own kinsman, the affectionate cousin whose timely warning had once perhaps saved his life? The commissioners report the losses of Nathaniel Bacon the elder, at the hands of his “unnatural kinsman,” as at least £1,000 sterling. The old gentleman was “said to have been a person soe desirous and Industrious to divert the evil consequences of his Rebell kinsman’s proceedings, that at the beginning hee freely proposed and promised to invest him in a considerable part of his Estate in present, and to leave him the Remainder in Reversion after his and his wife’s death, offering him other advantages upon condicion hee would lay downe his Armes, and become a good subject to his Majestie, that that colony might not be disturbed or destroyed, nor his owne ffamily stained with soe foule a Blott.”
Death of Bacon, Oct. 1, 1676.
At the burning of Jamestown the end of Bacon and of his rebellion was not far off. “This Prosperous Rebell, concluding now the day his owne, marcheth with his army into Gloster County, intending to visit all the northern part of Virginia ... and to settle affairs after his own measures.... But before he could arrive to the Perfection of his designes (wch none but the eye of omniscience could Penetrate) Providence did that which noe other hand durst (or at least did) doe and cut him off.” Malarious Jamestown wreaked its own vengeance upon its destroyer. When Bacon marched away from it he was already ill with fever, and on the first day of October, at the house of a friend in Gloucester, he “surrendered up that fort he was no longer able to keep, into the hands of the grim and all-conquering Captain, Death.” Accusations of poison were raised, but it is not likely that any other poison was concerned than impure water and marsh gases. The funeral was conducted with extraordinary secrecy. If a sudden turn of fortune should put Berkeley in possession of the body, he would surely hang it on a gibbet; so thoughtful Mr. Lawrence took measures to prevent any such indignity. One chronicler darkly hints that Bacon’s remains were buried in some very secret place in the woods, but another mentions stones laid in the coffin, which suggests that it was sunk beneath the waves of York River, as Soto was buried in the Mississippi and mighty Alaric in the Busento.
Collapse of the Rebellion.
Arrival of royal commissioners, January, 1677.
Outrageous conduct of Berkeley.
A strange meteoric career was that of young Bacon, begun and ended as it was in the space of about twenty weeks. On the news of his death the rebellion collapsed with surprising suddenness. His followers soon began giving in their submissions to the governor; the few that held out were dispersed or captured. Although it was not until January that the work of suppression was regarded as complete, yet that work consisted chiefly in catching fugitives. In January an English fleet arrived, with a regiment of troops, and a commission for investigating the affairs of Virginia. The commissioners were Sir John Berry, Sir Herbert Jeffries, and Colonel Francis Morison, three worthy and fair-minded gentlemen. They found nothing left for soldiers to do. They had authority for trying rebels, but in that business Berkeley had been beforehand. Soon after Bacon’s death one of his best officers, Colonel Thomas Hansford, was captured by Robert Beverley, and carried over to Accomac. He asked no favour save that he might be “shot like a soldier and not hanged like a dog,” but this was not granted. Hansford has been called “the first native martyr to American liberty.”[57] Soon afterward two captains were hanged, and the affair of Major Edward Cheesman seems to have occurred while Berkeley was still at Accomac. It is the foulest incident recorded in Berkeley’s career. When Cheesman was brought before him, the governor fiercely demanded, “Why did you engage in Bacon’s designs?” Before the prisoner could answer, his young wife stepped forward and said, “It was my provocations that made my husband join the cause; but for me he had never done what he has done.” Then falling on her knees before the governor, she implored him that she might be hanged as the guilty one instead of her husband.[58] The old wretch’s answer was an insult so atrocious that the royalist chronicler can hardly abide it. “His Honour” must have been beside himself with anger and could not have meant what he said; for no woman could have “so small an affection for her husband as to dishonour him by her dishonesty, and yet retain such a degree of love, that rather than he should be hanged she will be content to submit her own life to the sentence.” Perhaps the governor’s thirst for vengeance was satisfied by his ruffian speech, for Major Cheesman was not put to death, but remanded to jail, where he died of illness.