The next morning Bacon entered; it was reported that the governor had only fled to join a party of royalists who were advancing from the north. He determined therefore to burn the town, to prevent its becoming a harbour to the enemy; and Drummond and Lawrence, who were with Bacon, not only counselled this desperate measure, but themselves set fire to their own houses, which were the best in the town after the governor’s. The number of houses, however, was small, amounting to about eighteen; but the church, the oldest in America, and the newly-erected State-house, were consumed likewise, “the ruins of the church-tower and the memorials in the adjoining grave yard being all that now remain to point out to the stranger where once Jamestown stood.”
Leaving the smoking ruins of Jamestown, Bacon marched to meet Colonel Brent, who was advancing from the Potomac with 1,200 men. No battle ensued, however, for the greater number of these deserted the royalist cause, and Bacon, advancing to Gloucester, called a convention and administered an oath to the people, swearing them to the cause of popular liberty. The whole of Virginia, with the exception of the eastern shore, was now revolutionised. Berkeley had again fled to Accomac.
At this important moment, Bacon, who had inhaled disease on the marshes of Jamestown, suddenly fell sick, and on the 1st of October died, leaving the great cause of the people without a leader. His death wrung the popular heart; despair fell on all, for there was no one to finish his work.
The place of his interment was never known; it was concealed even from the body of his partisans, lest his remains should be insulted by the vindictive Berkeley. According to one tradition his friend Lawrence secretly buried him, laying stones upon his coffin; others maintain that his body was sunk in the deep waters of the majestic York River; and this is by no means improbable.
General Ingram succeeded to the command of the popular forces on Bacon’s death; and Berkeley, rejoicing in the misfortune that had befallen his enemies, roused himself to resistance, and sent Colonel Beverley to meet them. The tide now set in against the insurgents; Beverley immediately captured Thomas Hansford, an insurgent leader, “a young, gay, and gallant man; fond of amusement, impatient of restraint, keenly sensitive to honour, fearless of death and passionately fond of the land that gave him birth.” Brought before Berkeley, the choleric old cavalier ordered him to be hanged. He heard his sentence unmoved, but asked as “a favour that he might be shot like a soldier and not hanged like a dog.” “You die as a rebel, not as a soldier!” was the reply. Reviewing his life, he professed repentance of his sins, but would not admit that his so-called rebellion was a sin; and his last words were, “I die a loyal subject and a lover of my country.”
Hansford was the first Virginian who died on the gallows; the first American martyr to the popular cause. He was executed on the 13th of November, 1676. Other insurgent leaders were taken; among the rest, Edmund Cheesman and Thomas Wilford; the latter, the second son of a royalist knight who had died fighting for Charles I., and now a successful Virginian emigrant. He, too, was hanged. Cheesman was brought up before the governor. “Why did you engage in Bacon’s designs?” demanded the latter. At that instant a young woman rushed forward, the wife of the prisoner, and replying before he had time to utter a word, exclaimed, “My provocations made my husband join in Bacon’s cause. But for me he would never have done it!” And then falling on her knees, she added, “and seeing what has been done was through my means, I am most guilty; let me be hanged and my husband be pardoned!”
The governor, incapable of feeling the devoted affection of this noble woman, ordered her off, adding the grossest insult to his words. Her husband died in prison of ill usage.
With the success of his party the vindictive passions of the governor increased. Mercy was an unknown sentiment to his heart, and his avarice gratified itself by fines and confiscations. Fearing the result of trial by jury, he resorted to courts-martial, where the verdicts were certain and severe. Four persons were thus hanged on one occasion. Drummond was seized, in the depth of winter, in Chickahomony Swamp, half famished, and being stripped and put in irons, was conveyed to Berkeley. Berkeley, seeing him approach, hastened out to meet him, and with a bow of derision, saluted him: “Mr. Drummond, you are very welcome; I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia; Mr. Drummond, you shall be hanged in half an hour!” “What your honour pleases,” replied the patriot, calmly. He was tried by court-martial, and though he had never held any military command, he was immediately condemned; and a ring being forcibly torn from his finger, he was executed within three hours. The fate of Lawrence was never known; but report said that he and four others, in the depth of winter, when the snow was ankle-deep, threw themselves into a river, rather than perish like Drummond. The conduct of Berkeley had been that of a dastard in the struggle, and now his cruelty was that of a fiend. A royal proclamation arrived from England, promising pardon to all but Bacon. But this was utterly disregarded, Berkeley, indeed, altered it to suit his own temper, and excepted from mercy about fifty persons, among whom was Sarah Grindon, the wife of the late attorney. Twenty-two were hanged; three died from hard usage in prison; three fled before trial, and two after conviction.
In the course of two months, trials before the governor and council, by “juries of life and death,” were substituted instead of courts-martial; but the result was little different. Giles Bland, who, we may remember, endeavoured to seize Laramore’s ship, was one of the first victims. It was in vain that he pleaded the king’s pardon, then in the governor’s pocket. The governor had condemned him already, and he perished. Indeed, “none escaped being found guilty, condemned, and hanged, who put themselves on trial.” The land groaned with the excess of punishment. The very assembly itself besought of the governor “to desist from sanguinary punishments, for none could tell when or where they would cease.” And when executions ceased, other modes of punishment began. Vast numbers, without trial, were condemned to heavy fines and confiscation of property. Many were banished, their property being forfeited; others were sentenced to beg pardon on their knees for their lives, with ropes round their necks. In some cases, where the magistrates were inclined to leniency, a small tape, or “Manchester binding,” as it was called, was allowed as a substitute for the rope; but this, when it came to the knowledge of the assembly, was censured as contempt of authority. Many of the fines went to the use of the governor.
When the news of these bloody doings reached London, Charles, who, with all his faults, was not cruel, exclaimed with indignation, “The old fool has taken away more lives in that naked country than I have for the murder of my father!” There was some mercy in England, though there was none in Virginia; for when Sarah Drummond, on the execution of her husband and the confiscation of his estate for the use of the governor, was driven out, with her five small children, to starve in the woods, she, like a brave-hearted woman, as she was, having sent to London a petition setting forth the cruel treatment of her husband and the destitution of herself and her children, the Lord Chancellor Finch exclaimed—Sir William Berkeley being then dead—“I know not whether it be lawful to wish a person alive, otherwise I could wish Sir William Berkeley so, to see what could be answered to such barbarity; but he has answered that before this.”