Lovely woman flits in and out through the whole story of Bacon's Rebellion, touching up the narrative here and there with the interest her presence always creates. First there is the fair and fascinating young wife of Sir William Berkeley, said to have turned his head in his old age. A beautiful
portrait of her remains to make excuses for the bewitched husband's weakness. She seems to have been capable of excessive irony upon occasion. The Royal Commissioners indignantly complained that when they went ashore and called upon Lady Frances Berkeley she received them courteously and sent them back to the wharf, in state, in the Governor's coach, but they afterward found that the coachman she chose to drive them was the "common hangman."
Then there is the brave-hearted young bride of the Rebel, trembling with fears for his safety, no doubt, but exulting in his popularity, and writing home to tell about it.
We have a series of characteristic pictures in the dusky "Queen of Pamunkey" upbraiding the Virginians for the death of her consort, the "mighty Totapotamoy"; the house-wives running out of their homes to see the victorious Rebel pass and heap him with blessings and gifts of food; the white-aproned ladies guarding the Rebel fort from the guns of their own husbands,
and, at the end of all, the wife of Major Cheesman upon her knees before the Governor, praying to be hanged in her husband's place. Madam Sarah Drummond seems to have been as ardent an admirer of Bacon as her husband. When others were hesitating for fear of what his Majesty's "red-coats" might do, she picked up a stick and broke it in two, saying, "I fear the power of England no more than a broken straw."
The only child left by Nathaniel Bacon was a daughter, Mary, born a short time before or after his death, and through her many can claim descent from the Rebel, though none of them bear his name. She grew, in due time, to womanhood, and married, in England, Hugh Chamberlain, a famous doctor of medicine and physician to Queen Anne, and became the mother of three daughters. The eldest of these, Mary, died a spinster, the second, Anna Maria, became the wife of the Right Honorable Edward Hopkins, who was a Member of Parliament for Coventry in the time of
William III and Anne, and Secretary of State for Ireland. The third daughter, Charlotte, married Richard Luther, Esq., of Essex, England.
Young Madam Bacon, so early and tragically widowed, was married twice afterward—first becoming Madam Jarvis and later Madam Mole. Devoid of romance as this record sounds, her first love affair and marriage had not been without a strong flavor of that captivating element. The young woman's father, Sir Edward Duke, for reasons unknown, opposed the match with "Nat" Bacon and provided in his will that his bequest to her of £2,000 should be forfeited if she should persist in marrying "one Bacon." That Mistress Elizabeth gave up her fortune for him, is but another proof of the Rebel's charm.
Later, as Madam Jarvis, she and her husband brought suit for a share in her father's estate, but the Lord Chancellor decided against her, and gave as his opinion that her father had been right—"such an example of presumptuous disobedience highly meriting such punishment; she being
only prohibited to marry with one man by name, and nothing in the whole fair garden of Eden would serve her but this forbidden fruit."
