"THE PROSPEROUS REBEL."
The firebrand's uncanny work complete, Bacon marched his men back to "Green Spring" and quartered them there. That commodious plantation, noted among other things for its variety of fruits and its delightful spring water, must have been a welcome change from the trenches before Jamestown, haunted by malaria and mosquitoes.
Comfortably established in Sir William Berkeley's own house, the Rebel's next step was to draw up an oath of fidelity to the people's cause, denouncing Sir William as a traitor and an enemy to the public good, and again binding his followers to resist any forces that might be sent from England until such time as his Majesty should "fully understand the miserable case of the country,
and the justice of our proceedings," and if they should find themselves no longer strong enough to defend their "lives and liberties," to quit the colony rather than submit to "any such miserable a slavery" as they had been undergoing.
Though the "prosperous rebel," as the Royal Commissioners call Bacon, had now everything his own way, his hour of triumph was marked by dignity and moderation. Even those who opposed him bore witness that he "was not bloodily inclined in the whole progress of this rebellion." He had only one man—a deserter—executed, and even in that case he declared that he would spare the victim if any single one of his soldiers would speak a word to save him. The Royal Commissioners, who had made a careful study of Bacon's character, expressed the belief that he at last had the poor fellow's life taken, not from cruelty, but as a wholesome object-lesson for his army.
He suggested an exchange of prisoners of war to Berkeley—offering the Reverend John Clough (minister at Jamestown),
Captain Thomas Hawkins, and Major John West, in return for Captain Carver (of whose execution, it seems, he had not heard), Bland, and Farloe. Governor Berkeley scorned to consider the proposition, and instead of releasing the gentlemen asked for, afterward sent the remaining two after the luckless Captain Carver, although Bacon spared the lives of all those he had offered in exchange, and though Mr. Bland's friends in England had procured the King's pardon for him, which he pleaded at his trial was even then in the Governor's pocket.
Though Bacon himself was never accused of putting any one to death in cold blood, or of plundering any house, he found that the people began to complain bitterly of the depredations, rudeness, and disorder of his men. He therefore set a strict discipline over his army and became more moderate than ever himself.
After a few days' rest at "Green Spring" the Rebel marched on to Tindall's Point, Gloucester County, where he made the home
of Colonel Augustine Warner, Speaker of the House of Burgesses, his headquarters. From there he sent out a notice to all the people of the county to meet him at the court-house for the purpose of taking his oath.
