Persuasion having failed, Bacon took sterner measures. Setting up a court-martial, he put some of his opponents on trial. But though Berkeley scorned his proposal that they be exchanged for Carver and Bland, none was executed save one deserter. But the trials served their purpose, for when he summoned the militia again they all subscribed to his oath.
Bacon now turned his attention to the Eastern Shore. He realized that so long as Berkeley had there a base of operations, from which he could launch sudden attacks, his position was insecure. So he sent Captain George Farloe, "one of Cromwell's men," with forty soldiers across the bay to surprise and capture Berkeley. But it was not easy to cross so large a body of water in small boats, and Farloe was taken and hanged. Equally futile was a manifesto to the people of the Eastern Shore urging them to rise against the governor.
Bacon gave orders that the estates of the governor and his friends be ransacked for the use of his army, and Green Spring, King's Creek, Warner Hall, and other places, were denuded of their cattle, sheep, hogs, Indian corn, and even blankets and clothing. But when the rough soldiers began to plunder friend and foe alike Bacon called a halt. And instead of hanging every enemy who fell into his hands in retaliation for Berkeley's executions, he released some without bringing them to trial and pardoned others who had been condemned.
To see that his orders were carried out he now planned, probably on the advice of Lawrence and Drummond, to appoint three committees, one "for settling the south side of James River," another to accompany the army "to inquire into the cause of all seizures," and the third to manage the Indian war. To prevent raids by the enemy from the Eastern Shore Bacon ordered the banks of the great rivers "to be guarded all along, to observe their motion, and as they moved to follow them and prevent them from landing or having any provisions sent on board them."
But for the daring young commander the end was at hand. "Before he could arrive at the perfection of his plans providence did that which no other hand durst do." While at his headquarters in the house of Major Thomas Pate, in Gloucester, a few miles east of West Point, he became ill of dysentery. Bacon's enemies accused him of being an atheist, but in his last hours he called in Mr. Wadding to prepare his mind for death. "He died much dissatisfied in mind," we are told, "inquiring ever and anon after the arrival of the frigates and soldiers from England, and asking if the guards were strong about the house." He died October 26, 1676.
Bacon's enemies made much of the fact that he was so infected with lice that his shirts had to be burned, and because of it spoke of his death as infamous. But the lice probably had nothing to do with it, since typhus seems to have been almost unknown in early America. On the other hand, dysentery was fairly common. Bacon's body has never been found. Thomas Mathews tells us that Berkeley wished to hang it on a gibbet, but on exhuming his casket he found in it nothing but stones. It was supposed that the faithful Lawrence, probably in the dark of night, had buried the body in some secret place.
Berkeley gloated over his arch enemy's death. "His usual oath which he swore at least a thousand times a day was 'God damn my blood,'" he wrote, "and God so infected his blood that it bred lice in an incredible number, so that for twenty days he never washed his shirts but burned them. To this God added the bloody flux, and an honest minister wrote this epitaph on him:
'Bacon is dead, I am sorry at my heart
That lice and flux should take the hangman's part'."
But while his enemies scoffed, Bacon's followers mourned. One of them expressed their sorrow and despair in excellent verse:
"Death why so cruel! What, no other way
To manifest thy spleene, but thus to slay
Our hopes of safety, liberty, our all
Which, through thy tyranny, with him must fall
To its late chaos? Had thy rigid force
Been dealt by retail, and not thus in gross,
Grief had been silent: Now we must complain
Since thou, in him, hast more than thousand slain...."