Henrico County chose Nathaniel Bacon to represent it in the new House of Burgesses, and Captain Crewes was also sent from that county. Although the voters were resolved to give their darling a voice in the Assembly, however, they were loth to trust his person in the midst of so many dangers as they knew lurked about Jamestown for him. Madam Elizabeth Bacon, proudly writing of her young
husband, to her sister in England, under date June 29, says, "The country does so really love him that they would not leave him alone anywhere."
And so, accompanied by a body-guard of forty armed men, the newly elected Burgess of Henrico set sail in a sloop for Jamestown. When he had passed Swan's Point, a mile or two above the town, he dropped anchor and sent a messenger ashore to inquire of the Governor whether or not he might land in safety and take his seat as a member of the Assembly. Governor Berkeley's only answer was delivered promptly, and with no uncertain sound, from the savage mouths of the "great guns" on the ramparts of the town fort—whereupon Bacon moved his sloop higher up the river. After nightfall, accompanied by a party of his men, he ventured on shore and went to "Mr. Lawrence's house" in the town, where he had an interview with his good friends Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Drummond, and then returned to the sloop without having been seen. These two friends of Bacon's were
gentlemen of prominence and wealth in the colony. Their houses were the best built and the best furnished in Jamestown, and Richard Lawrence was a scholar as well as a "gentleman and a man of property," for he was a graduate of Oxford, and was known to his contemporaries as "thoughtful Mr. Lawrence." His accomplishments, added to a genial and gracious temper, made him a favorite with both the humble and the great, and he had the honor to represent Jamestown in the House of Burgesses. He had married a rich widow who kept a fashionable inn at Jamestown, and their house was a rendezvous for persons of the best quality. Mr. Lawrence was cordially hated by Governor Berkeley and his friends, one of whom dubbed him "that atheistical and scandalous person."
Mr. Drummond, "a sober Scotch Gentleman of good repute," had at one time been Governor of North Carolina. He was noted for wisdom and honesty, and an admirer said of him, "His dimensions are not to be taken by the line of an ordinary capacity"; but the Governor's caustic friend, already
quoted, has placed him on record as "that perfidious Scot."
We shall hear more of these two gentlemen hereafter.
At length, finding no hope of meeting with a more hospitable greeting from the Governor of Virginia than that which he had already received, the "Rebel" set his sails homeward; but, in obedience to Governor Berkeley's orders, Captain Gardner, master of the ship Adam and Eve, which lay a little way up the river, headed him off, and "commanded his sloop in" by firing upon him from aboard ship, arrested him and his guard, and delivered them up to the Governor, in Jamestown. Within the State House there a bit of drama was then acted in the presence of the amazed Assembly—Governor Berkeley and Mr. Bacon playing the principal parts. In this scene the fair-spoken Governor's feigned clemency was well-matched by the prisoner's feigned repentance, for Berkeley found it prudent to be careful of the person of a man in whose defense the excited people were ready to lay down their
lives, and Bacon found it equally prudent to seem to believe in the friendship of one who he knew hated him with all the venom of his bitter heart, and doubtless also realized that to accept the proffered clemency, however insincere he might know it to be, was the likeliest way of obtaining the coveted commission to continue his Indian campaign, and to gain admission to his seat in the Assembly, by which he hoped to raise his voice in behalf of the oppressed commonalty of Virginia.
The Governor, looking at Bacon, but addressing himself to the Assembly, said: