Bacon's Rebellion, 1676

by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

No sooner had the commissioners arrived than Berkeley became involved in a bitter quarrel with them. When they told him to obey the King's orders to come to England, he made excuses to linger until he had taken his revenge on the rebels. Jeffreys brought with him a proclamation pardoning all the rebels with the sole exception of Bacon, but when Berkeley published it he had the audacity to exempt from it not only two men who had died during the war, fourteen who had already been executed, and twenty-six others whom he mentioned by name, but all those "now in prison for rebellion or under bond for the same." Of those in prison and not mentioned by name in the proclamation Robert Stoakes, John Isles, Richard Pomfrey, John Whitson, and William Scarburgh were later executed.

Berkeley was also determined to make good his personal losses from the estates of the rebels. "I have lost at least £8000 sterling in houses, goods, plantation, servants, and cattle, and never expect to be restored to a quarter of it," he complained. The rebels left "me not one grain of corn, not one cow.... I have not £5 in the world." So he, Beverley, Philip Ludwell, and others of the "loyal party," were furious when Jeffreys insisted that they stop breaking open and plundering the houses and barns of the former rebels, and take their complaints to the courts.

For three months Berkeley postponed his departure, but at last, on April 25, he went on board the Rebecca, the vessel which had been of such vital importance to him during the rebellion, and set sail for England. But he was now a very ill man. "He came here alive but ... unlike to live," wrote Secretary Coventry. He died on July 13, 1677, and was interred at Twickenham.

With the death of Berkeley a main cause of discontent and insubordination in Virginia was removed. Though Culpeper and Effingham, who succeeded in turn to the governorship, made onslaughts on the liberties of the people, they acted, not from any overwhelming desire to make themselves absolute, but because they reflected the spirit of the Second Stuart Despotism. But this came to an end with the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, and from that time to the passage of the Stamp Act, the people of Virginia had no need to take arms to defend their liberties. For decades after Bacon's Rebellion, the King and the governors were wary of bearing down upon them too hard for fear of causing another uprising. For the time they had learned their lesson. And had they not forgotten it after the lapse of a century, there might have been no American Revolution.

When one reviews the tragic events in Virginia during the fateful year of 1676, one may well ask: "Would the rebellion have occurred had there been no Indian war?" Possibly not. Berkeley was aging and within a few years he might have died, and a less despotic governor taken his place. Had the planters waited, their lot would have been bettered by the rising price of tobacco. On the other hand, it is possible that if the war had not touched off the rebellion something else would have done so.

Would the Indian war have started the rebellion had the mass of the people had no other grievances? This seems unlikely. When the news of the uprising reached Charles II he thought it past belief that "so considerable a body of men, without the least grievance or oppression, should rise up in arms and overturn the government." And so it would have been past belief had there been no grievance or oppression.

Had the dispute between Bacon and Berkeley as to how the war should be conducted been all there was at issue, the people would hardly have risen in wild anger to overthrow the government, drive the governor into exile, defy the King, make ready to resist his forces, and risk death on the gallows. Philip Ludwell said that the rebel army was made up of men "whose condition ... was such that a change could not make worse." Had not the English trade laws, misgovernment, and injustice practically eliminated the middle class there would have been hundreds to whom the maintaining of law and order was the first consideration. They would have supported Berkeley's Indian policy, however unwise, rather than risk their estates. As it was, the governor found himself practically deserted. Never before was there "so great a madness as this base people are generally seized with," he complained.

No one will contend that the firing on Fort Sumter was the cause of the War between the States, or that the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand was the cause of the first World War. These were but the matches thrown into the powder kegs. The kegs had been filling up for many years, and sooner or later explosions were inevitable. So in Virginia had there been no powder keg, the lighted match of the Indian war would probably have flickered and burnt itself out.

In most great upheavals men have mixed motives. Of course Bacon and his men rose in arms partly to protect themselves and their families from the Indians. They said so repeatedly. But we have abundant evidence from both sides that they were determined also to put an end to oppression and misgovernment. "As for Bacon's designs of prosecuting the Indian war it is most evident that he never intended anything more in it than a covert under which to act all his villanies," wrote Philip Ludwell. "If these had not been the chief motives they had certainly understanding enough to have led them a fairer way to presenting their grievances than on their swords' points."

The Council, in a long statement, written when the uprising was but a few weeks old, declared that Bacon's "only aim has always been and is nothing else but of total subversion of the government." Thomas Ludwell and Robert Smith, who at the time were in England, on receiving reports of the rebellion, said that when the Indian raids began "some idle and poor people made use of the present conjunction for their ill designs." William Sherwood, an eyewitness of what took place, testified that "it is most true that the great oppressions and abuses of the people by the governor's arbitrary will hath been the cause of the late troubles there." Colonel Jeffreys, who was commissioned by the King to investigate the causes of the uprising, put the blame, not on the Indian war, but upon Philip Ludwell and Robert Beverley, who "were the great advisors of Berkeley, and as it may be proved were the chief causes of the miseries that befell the country in the rebellion."