In the June weather Bacon sailed down to Jamestown, with a number of those who had backed him in that assumption of power to raise troops and go against the Indians. When he came to Jamestown it was to find the high sheriff waiting for him by the Governor's orders. He was put under arrest. Hot discussion followed. But the people were for the moment in the ascendent, and Bacon should not be sacrificed. A compromise was reached. Bacon was technically guilty of "unlawful, mutinous and rebellious practises." If, on his knees before Governor, Council, and Burgesses, he would acknowledge as much and promise henceforth to be his Majesty's obedient servant, he and those implicated with him should be pardoned. He himself might be readmitted to the Council, and all in Virginia should be as it had been. He should even have the commission he had acted without to go and fight against the Indians.
Bacon thereupon made his submission upon his knees, promising that henceforth he would "demean himself dutifully, faithfully, and peaceably." Formally forgiven, he was restored to his place in the Virginia Council. An eyewitness reports that presently he saw "Mr. Bacon on his quondam seat with the Governor and Council, which seemed a marvellous indulgence to one whom he had so lately proscribed as a rebel." The Assembly of 1676 was of a different temper and opinion from that of the Long Assembly. It was an insurgent body, composed to a large degree of mere freemen and small planters, with a few of the richer, more influential sort who nevertheless queried that old divine right of rule. Berkeley thought that he had good reason to doubt this Assembly's intentions, once it gave itself rein. He directs it therefore to confine its attention to Indian troubles. It did, indeed, legislate on Indian affairs by passing an elaborate act for the prosecution of the war. An army of a thousand white men was to be raised. Bacon was to be commander-in-chief. All manner of precautions were to be taken. But this matter disposed of, the Assembly thereupon turned to "the redressing several grievances the country was then labouring under; and motions were made for inspecting the public revenues, the collectors' accounts," and so forth. The Governor thundered; friends of the old order obstructed; but the Assembly went on its way, reforming here and reforming there. It even went so far as to repeal the preceding Assembly's legislation regarding the franchise. All white males who are freemen were now privileged to vote, "together with the freeholders and housekeepers."
A certain member wanted some detail of procedure retained because it was customary. "Tis true it has been customary," answered another, "but if we have any bad customs amongst us, we are come here to mend 'em!" "Whereupon," says the contemporary narrator, "the house was set in a laughter." But after so considerable an amount of mending there threatened a standstill. What was to come next? Could men go further—as they had gone further in England not so many years ago? Reform had come to an apparent impasse. While it thus hesitated, the old party gained in life.
Bacon, now petitioning for his promised commission against the Indians, seems to have reached the conclusion that the Governor might promise but meant not to perform, and not only so, but that in Jamestown his very life was in danger. He had "intimation that the Governor's generosity in pardoning him and restoring him to his place in the Council were no other than previous wheedles to amuse him."
In Jamestown lived one whom a chronicler paints for us as "thoughtful Mr. Lawrence." This gentleman was an Oxford scholar, noted for "wit, learning, and sobriety... nicely honest, affable, and without blemish in his conversation and dealings." Thus friends declared, though foes said of him quite other things. At any rate, having emigrated to Virginia and married there, he had presently acquired, because of a lawsuit over land in which he held himself to be unjustly and shabbily treated through influences of the Governor, an inveterate prejudice against that ruler. He calls him in short "an old, treacherous villain." Lawrence and his wife, not being rich, kept a tavern at Jamestown, and there Bacon lodged, probably having been thrown with Lawrence before this. Persons are found who hold that Lawrence was the brain, Bacon the arm, of the discontent in Virginia. There was also Mr. William Drummond, who will be met with in the account of Carolina. He was a "sober Scotch gentleman of good repute"—but no more than Lawrence on good terms with the Governor of Virginia.
On a morning in June, when the Assembly met, it was observed that Nathaniel Bacon was not in his place in the Council—nor was he to be found in the building, nor even in Jamestown itself, though Berkeley had Lawrence's inn searched for him. He had left the town—gone up the river in his sloop to his plantation at Curles Neck "to visit his wife, who, as she informed him, was indisposed." In truth it appears that Bacon had gone for the purpose of gathering together some six hundred up-river men. Or perhaps they themselves had come together and, needing a leader, had turned naturally to the man who was under the frown of an unpopular Governor and all the Governor's supporters in Virginia. At any rate Bacon was presently seen at the head of no inconsiderable army for a colony of less than fifty thousand souls. Those with him were only up-river men; but he must have known that he could gather besides from every part of the country. Given some initial success, he might even set all Virginia ablaze. Down the river he marched, he and his six hundred, and in the summer heat entered Jamestown and drew up before the Capitol. The space in front of this building was packed with the Jamestown folk and with the six hundred. Bacon, a guard behind him, advanced to the central door, to find William Berkeley standing there shaking with rage. The old royalist has courage. He tears open his silken vest and fine shirt and faces the young man who, though trained in the law of the realm, is now filling that law with a hundred wounds. He raises a passionate voice. "Here! Shoot me! 'Fore God, a fair mark—a fair mark! Shoot!"
Bacon will not shoot him, but will have that promised commission to go against the Indians. Those behind him lift and shake their guns. "We will have it! We will have it!" Governor and Council retire to consider the demand. If Berkeley is passionate and at times violent, so is Bacon in his own way, for an eye-witness has to say that "he displayed outrageous postures of his head, arms, body and legs, often tossing his hand from his sword to his hat," and that outside the door he had cried: "Damn my blood! I'll kill Governor, Council, Assembly and all, and then I'll sheathe my sword in my own heart's blood!" He is no dour, determined, unwordy revolutionist like the Scotch Drummond, nor still and subtle like "the thoughtful Mr. Lawrence." He is young and hot, a man of oratory and outward acts. Yet is he a patriot and intelligent upon broad public needs. When presently he makes a speech to the excited Assembly, it has for subject-matter "preserving our lives from the Indians, inspecting the public revenues, the exorbitant taxes, and redressing the grievances and calamities of that deplorable country." It has quite the ring of young men's speeches in British colonies a century later!
The Governor and his party gave in perforce. Bacon got his commission and an Act of Indemnity for all chance political offenses. General and Commander-in-chief against the Indians—so was he styled. Moreover, the Burgesses, with an alarmed thought toward England, drew up an explanatory memorial for Charles II's perusal. This paper journeyed forth upon the first ship to sail, but it had for traveling companion a letter secretly sent from the Governor to the King. The two communications were painted in opposite colors. "I have," says Berkeley, "for above thirty years governed the most flourishing country the sun ever shone over, but am now encompassed with rebellion like waters."