Chapter XI: Bacon’s Rebellion (1)

[Sidenote: The Navigation Act of 1651.]

The rapid development of maritime commerce in the seventeenth century soon furnished a new occasion for human folly and greed to assert themselves in acts of legislation. Crude mediæval methods of robbery began to give place to the ingenious modern methods in which men’s pockets are picked under the specious guise of public policy. Your mediæval baron would allow no ship or boat to pass his Rhenish castle without paying what he saw fit to extort for the privilege, and at the end of his evil career he was apt to compound with conscience and buy a ticket to heaven by building a chapel to the Virgin. Your modern manufacturer obtains legislative aid in fleecing his fellow-countrymen, while he seeks popularity by bestowing upon the public a part of his ill-gotten gains in the shape of a new college or a town library. This change from the more brutal to the more subtle devices for living upon the fruits of other men’s labour was conspicuous during the seventeenth century, and one of the most glaring instances of it was the Navigation Act of 1651, which forbade the importation of goods into England except in English ships, or ships of the nation that produced the goods. This foolish act was intended to cripple the Dutch carrying trade, and speedily led to a lamentable and disgraceful war between England and Holland. In its application to America it meant that English colonies could trade only with England in English ships, and it was generally greeted with indignation. Cromwell, however, did little or nothing to enforce it in America. Charles II.’s government was more active in the matter and soon became detested. One of the earliest causes of the American Revolution was thus set in operation. The policy begun in the Navigation Act was one of the grievances that kept Massachusetts in a chronic quarrel with Charles II. during the whole of his reign, and it was a source of no less irritation in Virginia.

[Sidenote: The second Navigation Act.]

A second Navigation Act, passed at the beginning of the reign of Charles II., prescribed that “no goods or commodities whatsoever shall be imported into or exported from any of the king’s lands, islands, plantations, or territories in Asia, Africa, or America, in any other than English, Irish, or plantation built ships, and whereof the master and at least three-fourths of the mariners shall be Englishmen, under forfeiture of ships and goods.” It was further provided that “no sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, ginger, fustic and other dyeing woods, of the growth or manufacture of our Asian, African, or American colonies, shall be shipped from the said colonies to any place but to England, Ireland, or to some other of his Majesty’s said plantations, there to be landed, under forfeiture of goods and ships.”

[Sidenote: Bland’s remonstrance.]

The motive in these restrictions is obvious enough. Their effects were ably set forth in 1677, in a memorial by John Bland, a sagacious London merchant, whose grasp of the principles of political economy was very remarkable for that age.[32] In order that merchants in England might buy Virginia tobacco very cheap, the demand for it was restricted by cutting off the export to foreign markets. In order that they might sell their goods to Virginia at exorbitant prices, the Virginians were prohibited from buying anything elsewhere. The shameless rapacity of these merchants was such as might have been expected under such fostering circumstances. If the planter shipped his own tobacco to England, the charges for freight would be put so high as to leave him scarcely any margin of profit.

[Sidenote: Some direct consequences.]

Such restrictions were apt to have other effects than those contemplated. The “protected” merchants chuckled over their sagacity in keeping Dutchmen away from Virginia, for thus it would become possible to make the Dutchmen pay three or four shillings in England for tobacco that cost a ha’penny in the colony. But the worthy burghers of the Netherlands took a different view of the matter. They began planting tobacco for themselves in the East Indies, so that it became less necessary to buy it of the English. Another somewhat curious consequence may be stated in Bland’s own words: “Again, if the Hollanders must not trade to Virginia, how shall the planters dispose of their tobacco? The English will not buy it [all], for what the Hollander carried thence was a sort of tobacco not ... used by us in England, but merely to transport for Holland. Will it not then perish on the planters’ hands? which undoubtedly is not only an apparent loss of so much stock and commoditie to the plantations who suffer thereby, but for want of its employment an infinite prejudice to the commerce in general.”

[Sidenote: Some indirect consequences.]

There was yet another aspect of the matter. “I demand then, in the next place, which way shall the charge of the governments be maintained, if the Hollanders be debarred trade in Virginia and Maryland, or anything raised to defray the constant and yearly levies for the securing the inhabitants from invasions of the Indians? How shall the forts and public places be built and repaired, with many other incident charges daily arising, which must be taken care for, else all will come to destruction? for when the Hollanders traded thither, they paid upon every anchor of brandy (which is about 25 gallons) 5 shillings import brought in by them, and upon every hogshead of tobacco carried thence 10 shillings; and since they were debarred trade, our English, as they did not, whilst the Hollander traded there, pay anything, neither would they when they traded not ...; so that all these charges being taxed on the poor planters, it hath so impoverished them that they scarce can recover wherewith to cover their nakedness. As foreign trade makes rich and prosperous any country that hath within it any staple commodities to invite them thither, so it makes men industrious, striving with others to gather together into societies, and building of towns, and nothing doth it sooner than the concourse of shipping, as we may see before our eyes, Dover and Deal what they are grown into, the one by the Flanders trade, the other by ships riding in the Downs.”

[Sidenote: Exposure of the humbug.]

But if in spite of all these arguments the Navigation Act must stand, then, says this acute writer, “let me on the behalf of the said colonies of Virginia and Maryland make these following proposals, which I hope will appear but equitable:--

“_First_, that the traders to Virginia and Maryland from England shall furnish and supply the planters and inhabitants of those colonies with all sorts of commodities and necessaries which they may want or desire, at as cheap rates and prices as the Hollanders used to have when the Hollander was admitted to trade thither.

“_Secondly_, that the said traders out of England to those colonies shall not only buy of the planters such tobacco ... as is fit for England, but take off all that shall be yearly made by them, at as good rates and prices as the Hollanders used to give for the same, by bills of exchange or otherwise....

“_Thirdly_, that if any of the inhabitants or planters of the said colonies shall desire to ship his tobacco or goods for England, that the traders from England to Virginia and Maryland shall let them have freight in their ships at as low and cheap rates as they used to have when the Hollanders and other nations traded thither.

“_Fourthly_, that for maintenance of the governments, raising of forces to withstand the invasions of the Indians, building of forts and other public works needful in such new discovered countries, the traders from England to pay there in Virginia and Maryland as much yearly as was received of the Hollanders and strangers as did trade thither, whereby the country may not have the whole burden to lie on their hard and painful labour and industry, which ought to be encouraged but not discouraged.

“Thus having proposed in my judgment what is both just and equal, to all such as would not have the Hollanders permitted to trade into Virginia and Maryland, I hope if they will not agree hereunto, it will easily appear it is their own profits and interest they seek, not those colonies’s nor your Majesty’s service, but in contrary the utter ruin of all the inhabitants and planters there; and if they perish, that vast territory must be left desolate, to the exceeding disadvantage of this nation and your Majesty’s honour and revenue.”

[Sidenote: Bland’s own proposal.]

After this keen exposure of the protectionist humbug the author concludes by offering his own proposal. “Let all Hollanders and other nations whatsoever freely trade into Virginia and Maryland, and bring thither and carry thence whatever they please,” with only one qualification. It had been urged that, without legislative aid, English shipping could not compete successfully with that of other countries. Insatiableness of commercial greed begets a fidgetty, unreasoning dread of anything like free competition. Just as the Frenchman puts tariff duties upon German goods because he knows he cannot compete with Germans in a free market, while at the same moment the German puts tariff duties upon French goods because he knows he cannot compete with Frenchmen in a free market, so it was with men’s arguments two centuries ago. It was urged that French and Dutch ships could be built and navigated at smaller expense than English ships; and this point our author meets by suggesting a differential tonnage-duty “to counterpoise the cheapness,” only great care must be taken not to make it prohibitory.

[Sidenote: Distress caused by low price of tobacco.]

The principal effect of the Navigation Act upon Virginia and Maryland was to lower the price of tobacco while it increased the cost of all articles imported from England. As tobacco was the circulating medium in these colonies, the effect was practically a depreciation of the currency with the usual disastrous consequences. There was an inflation of prices, and all commodities became harder to get. Efforts were made from time to time to contract the currency by curtailing the tobacco crop. It was proposed, for example, in 1662, that no tobacco should be planted in Maryland or Virginia for the following year. Such proposals recurred from time to time, but it proved impossible to secure concerted action between the two colonies. In 1664 the whole tobacco crop of Virginia was worth less than £3 15s. for each person in the colony. In 1666 so much tobacco was left on the hands of the planters that a determined effort was made to enforce the cessation of planting, and after much discussion an agreement was reached between Maryland, Virginia, and the new settlements in Carolina, but the plan was defeated by disapproval in Maryland which led to a veto from Lord Baltimore. In 1667 the price of tobacco fell to a ha’penny a pound, and Thomas Ludwell, writing to Lord Berkeley in London, “declared that there were but three influences restraining the smaller landowners of Virginia from rising in rebellion, namely, faith in the mercy of God, loyalty to the king, and affection for the government.”[33]

[Sidenote: The Surry protest, 1673.]

The discontent sometimes took the form of a disposition to resist the collection of taxes, as in Surry, in December, 1673, when “a company of seditious and rude people to y^e number of ffourteene did unlawfully Assemble at y^e pish church of Lawnes Creeke, w^{th} Intent to declare they would not pay theire publiq taxes, & y^t they Expected diverse oth^{rs} to meete them, who faileing they did not put theire wicked design in Execution.” Nevertheless these persons assembled again, some three weeks later, in an old field “called y^e Divell’s field,” where they passed divers lawless resolutions interspersed with heated harangues. In particular one Roger Delke did say, “we will burne all before one shall Suffer,” and when brought before the magistrates, “y^e s^d Delke Acknowledged he said y^e same words, & being asked why they meet at y^e church he said by reason theire taxes were soe unjust, & they would not pay it.”[34] The ringleaders in this affair were fined, but Governor Berkeley remitted the fines, provided “they acknowledged their faults and pay the court charges.”

[Sidenote: The Arlington-Culpeper grant, 1673.]

Another cause of trouble was the king’s recklessness in rewarding public services or gratifying favourites by extensive grants of wild land in America. It was an easy way to pay debts, for it cost the king nothing, and all the labour and expense of making the grant valuable fell upon the grantee. To many of these grants there could, of course, be no objection. Those that founded the Carolinas and Pennsylvania and the Hudson Bay Company were all proper enough. The trouble began when territory already granted and occupied by Englishmen was given away again. There were some complicated and obscure instances of this in New England, but a flagrant and exasperating case occurred in Virginia in 1673, when Charles made a grant of the whole country to the Earl of Arlington and Lord Culpeper, to hold for thirty-one years at a yearly rent of 40 shillings to be paid at Michaelmas.

[Sidenote: Some of its effects.]

The practical effect of this grant was to convert Virginia into something like a proprietary government, with Arlington and Culpeper for proprietors. It was, of course, not the intention to disturb individuals in the possession of lands already acquired by a valid title; but escheated lands were to go to these proprietors instead of the crown, and there was an opportunity for grievous injustice, for many escheated lands were occupied by persons who had purchased them in good faith. The lord proprietors were to receive the revenues of the colony, to appoint all public officers, and to present pastors for installation. In short, the entire control of the internal administration of the colony was to be placed in their hands, and against such favourites of the king an appeal at any time was likely to be of little avail. It is needless to add that the grant was made without consulting the Virginians. For people who had lavished so much loyalty upon a worthless sovereign, this was a scurvy requital. To find its match for ingratitude one must go to the story of Inkle and Yarico. No sooner did the House of Burgesses hear of it than they sent commissioners to England to make an energetic protest. They found the king rather surprised to hear that the Virginians cared anything about such a trifle; he promised to satisfy everybody, and that naturally took some time, so that the matter was still under discussion when things came to a blaze in Virginia.

[Sidenote: Character of Sir William Berkeley.]

The unprincipled government of Charles II. in England was matched in some respects by the oppressive administration of Sir William Berkeley in Virginia. We have already met this gentleman on several occasions; it is now time to notice him more particularly. He was son of Sir Maurice Berkeley, who was one of the members of the London Company when it was first organized in 1606. Several members of the family were interested in American affairs. Sir William’s elder brother, Lord Berkeley of Stratton, was a favourite of Charles II., and one of the group of proprietors to whom that king granted Carolina in 1663. Sir William was an aristocrat to the ends of his fingers, a man of velvet and gold lace, a brave soldier, a devoted husband, a chivalrous friend, and withal as narrow and bigoted and stubborn a creature as one could find anywhere. He had no sympathy with common people, nor any very clear sense of duty toward them. When he first arrived in Virginia in 1642, at the age of thirty-four, he was considered very gracious and affable in manners, and during the ten years of his first governorship he seems to have been generally popular. From 1652 to 1660 he lived in retirement on his rural estate of Greenspring near Jamestown, where he had an orchard of more than 2,000 fruit trees--apples, pears, quinces, peaches, and apricots--and a stable of seventy fine horses. There he entertained Cavalier guests and drank healths to King Charles until he was once more called to Jamestown to be governor. In 1661 he went to London and stayed for a year, and it was afterwards thought that his visit with his froward and hot-tempered brother[35] worked a change in him for the worse. Berkeley’s errand in London was to oppose an attempt which the old London Company was making to have its charter restored; the people of Virginia had long ago passed the stage at which they regretted the overthrow of the Company. During his stay in London, Berkeley saw one of his own plays performed at the theatre, for this courtier and Cavalier dabbled in literature. Of this tragi-comedy, “The Lost Lady,” Pepys tells us in his Diary that at first he did not care much for it, but liked it better the next time he saw it.[36]

[Sidenote: Corruption and extortion.]

[Sidenote: The Long Assembly, 1661-1676.]

[Sidenote: Berkeley’s violent temper.]

After Berkeley’s return to Virginia the evils of Charles’s misgovernment soon began to show themselves. A swarm of place-hunters beset the king, who carelessly gave them appointments in Virginia, or recommended them to Berkeley for places. Judges and sheriffs, revenue collectors and parsons, were thus appointed without reference to fitness, with the natural results; the law was ill-administered, the public money embezzled, and the church scandalized. The custom-house charges on exported tobacco afforded chances for extortion and blackmailing, of which abundant advantage was taken, and Berkeley was not the sort of man who was quick to punish the rogues of his own party. Enemies accused him of profiting by the maladministration of his officials, and he himself confessed in a rather cynical letter to Lord Arlington that, while advancing years had taken away his ambition, they had left him covetous. A little group of wealthy planters, friends of Berkeley, obtained places on the council, and contrived to have everything their own way for several years. With their aid the governor tried to do away with the popular election of representatives. Amid the blaze of royalist exultation over the restoration of monarchy, the House of Burgesses elected in 1661 contained a large majority of members who believed in high prerogative and divine right; and Berkeley, having thus secured a legislature that was quite to his mind, kept it alive for fifteen years, until 1676, simply by the ingenious expedient of _adjourning_ it from year to year, and refusing to issue writs for a new election. The effect of such things was to carry more than one staunch Cavalier over into what was by no means a Puritan but none the less a strong opposition party. As this opposition could not find adequate voice in the legislature, it became ready for an explosion. As Berkeley’s old popularity ebbed away he grew arrogant and cross, and now and then some instance of mean vindictiveness swelled the rising tide of hatred against him. He became subject to fits of violent passion. The famous Quaker preacher, William Edmundson, who visited Virginia in 1672, called on the governor and sought to intercede with him for the Society of Friends, the members of which were shamefully treated in that colony. “He was very peevish and brittle,” says Edmundson, “and I could fasten nothing on him, with all the soft arguments I could use.... The next day was the men’s meeting at William Wright’s house [where I met] Major-General Bennett.... He asked me ‘How I was treated by the governor?’ I told him ‘he was brittle and peevish.’... He asked me ‘if the governor called me dog, rogue, etc.’ I said ‘No.’ ‘Then,’ said he, ‘you took him in his best humour, those being his usual terms when he is angry, for he is an enemy to every appearance of good.’”[37]

[Sidenote: Beginning of the Indian war, 1675.]

Such was the governor of Virginia and such the state of things there, when to the many troubles that were goading the people to rebellion the horrors of the tomahawk and scalping-knife were suddenly added. In 1672, after a fearful struggle of twenty years’ duration, the Five Nations of New York had completely overthrown and nearly annihilated their kinsmen the Susquehannocks. The defeated barbarians, slowly retreating southward, roamed on both sides of the Potomac, while parties of the victors, mostly from the Seneca tribe, pursued and harassed them. Early in the summer of 1675 some Algonquins of the Doeg tribe, dwelling in Stafford County, not far from the site of Fredericksburg, got into a dispute with one of the settlers and stole some of his pigs. The thieves were pursued, and in the chase one or two of them were shot. A few days afterward a herdsman was found mortally wounded at the door of his cabin, and said with his dying breath that it was Doegs who had done it. Then the county lieutenant of Stafford turned out with his militia to punish the offenders. This officer was Colonel George Mason, whose cavalry troop had gone down before Cromwell’s resistless blows in the crowning mercy at Worcester. He was great-grandfather of the George Mason who sat in the Federal Convention of 1787. One party of Colonel Mason’s men overtook and slew eleven of the Algonquins, and another party at some distance in the forest had already shot fourteen red men, when a chief came running up to Colonel Mason and told him that these latter were friendly Susquehannocks, and that the murderers of the herdsman were neither Algonquins nor Susquehannocks, but Senecas. The firing was instantly stopped, but the unfortunate affair had evil consequences. Murders by Indians along the Potomac became frequent. The Susquehannocks occupied an old blockhouse on the Maryland side of the river, and a force of Marylanders, commanded by Major Thomas Truman, marched out to dislodge them.

[Sidenote: John Washington.]

At the request of the Maryland government, Virginia sent a party to coöperate in this task. Its commander bore a name which his great-grandson was to make forever illustrious. Colonel John Washington had come over from England in 1657, with his younger brother Lawrence, and settled in Westmoreland County. He was now forty-four years old, a man of wealth and influence, a leading judge, and member of the House of Burgesses.

[Sidenote: The five Susquehannock envoys.]

When the Virginia troops crossed the Potomac they found their Maryland allies assembled before the blockhouse, with five Susquehannocks in custody. These Indians were envoys who had come out for a parley, but had apparently taken alarm and sought to escape, whereupon Major Truman seized and detained them until the Virginians should arrive. Then Colonel Washington, with his next in command, Major Isaac Allerton, proceeded to interrogate the Indians, while Major Truman listened in silence. Washington demanded satisfaction for the murders and other outrages committed in Virginia, but the Indians denied everything and declared that their deadly enemies the Senecas were the sole offenders. Washington then asked how it happened that several canoe-loads of beef and pork, stolen from the plantations, had been carried into the Susquehannock fort; was it their foes the Senecas who were thus supplying them with food? And how did it happen that a party of Susquehannocks just captured in Virginia were dressed in the clothes of Englishmen lately murdered? The falsehood was too palpable. The guilt of the Susquehannocks was plain, and they must either make amends or taste the rigours of war.

There can be little doubt that Colonel Washington was right. Then, as always until after 1763, the Long House was from end to end the steadfast ally of the English, and nothing could be more unlikely than that one of its tribes should have been guilty of these murders. It is quite clear that the Susquehannocks lied, with the double purpose of saving themselves and bringing down vengeance upon the Senecas. The first murders had been committed by Algonquins, and evidently the Susquehannocks had joined in the work in retaliation for the unfortunate mistake committed by Colonel Mason’s men.

[Sidenote: The killing of the envoys.]

At the close of the conference Major Truman called to Colonel Washington, asking if these were not impudent rogues to deny the murders they had done, when at that very moment the corpses of nine of their own tribe were lying unburied at Hurston’s plantation, where in a fight the defenders of the place had just slain them. As the envoys persisted in denying that these dead Indians were Susquehannocks, Washington suggested that they should be taken to Hurston’s and confronted with the bodies. So Truman’s men marched away with the five envoys, and presently put them to death, “w^{ch} was occation,” says one of the Virginian witnesses, “y^t much amaized & startled us & ou^r Comanders, being a thing y^t was never imagined or expected.”[38]

The killing of these envoys was in violation of a rule that holds in all warfare, whether savage or civilized, and Truman was impeached for it in the Maryland assembly; but owing to an obstinate disagreement between the two houses as to the penalty to be inflicted, he escaped without further punishment than the loss of his seat in the council.

[Sidenote: Berkeley’s perverseness.]

[Sidenote: Indian atrocities.]

Colonel Washington’s force proved too small to hold in check the infuriated Susquehannocks, who seem to have entered into alliance with the Algonquins of the country. Soon the whole border, from the Potomac to the falls of the James, was swarming with painted barbarians, and day after day renewed the tale of burning homes and slaughtered wives and children. This sort of thing went on through the fall and winter, driving people into frenzy, but Berkeley would not call out a military force for the occasion. He insisted that it was enough to instruct the county lieutenants, each in his county, to keep his militia in readiness. It was charged against him that fear of losing his share in a very lucrative fur trade made him unwilling to engage in war with the Indians. However this may have been, the spirit of the people had become so mutinous that he was probably afraid to entrust himself to the protection of a popular militia. Whatever the motive of his conduct, its consequences were highly disastrous. On a single day in January, 1676, within a circle of ten miles’ radius, thirty-six people were murdered; and when the governor was notified, he coolly answered that “nothing could be done until the assembly’s regular meeting in March”![39] Meanwhile the work of firebrand and tomahawk went on. In Essex County (then known as Rappahannock), sixty plantations were destroyed within seventeen days. It was thought by some persons that the Indians were stimulated by reports of the fearful havoc which their brethren were making in New England, where King Philip’s war was raging. Surely the wrath of the planters must have been redoubled when they heard of the stalwart troop led by Josiah Winslow into the Narragansett country, and noted the stern vengeance it wrought there on a December day of 1675, and contrasted these things with what they saw before them. As the Charles City people afterward declared with bitterness, “we do acknowledge we were so unadvised then ... as to believe it our duty incumbent on us both by the laws of God and nature, and our duty to his sacred Majesty, notwithstanding ... Sir William Berkeley’s prohibition, ... to take up arms ... for the just defence of ourselves, wives, and children, and this his Majesty’s country.”[40] At length, in March, the Long Assembly, as people called it, which had been elected in 1661, was convened for the last time; a force of 500 men was gathered, and all things were in readiness for a campaign, when Berkeley by proclamation disbanded the little army, declaring that the frontier forts, if duly prepared and equipped, afforded all the protection the country needed. To many people this seemed to be adding insult to injury; for while no fortress could prevent the skulking approach of the enemy through the tangled wilderness, it was widely believed that the repairing of forts was simply a device for enabling the governor’s friends to embezzle the money granted for the purpose.

[Sidenote: Nathaniel Bacon.]

[Sidenote: Drummond and Lawrence.]

At this time there was a young man of eight-and-twenty living on his plantation on James River, hard by Curl’s Wharf. His name was Nathaniel Bacon, son of Thomas Bacon, of Friston Hall, Suffolk, a kinsman of the great Lord Bacon.[41] His mother was daughter of a Suffolk knight, Sir Robert Brooke. He had studied law at Gray’s Inn, and after extensive travel on the continent of Europe had come to Virginia with his young wife shortly before the beginning of these Indian troubles. His father’s cousin, Nathaniel Bacon, of King’s Creek, who had dwelt in the colony since about 1650, was a man of large wealth and influence. The abilities and character of the young Nathaniel were rated so high that he already had a seat in the council. He was clearly an impetuous youth, brave and cordial, fiery at times, and gifted with a persuasive tongue. He was in person tall and lithe, with swarthy complexion and melancholy eyes, and a somewhat lofty demeanour. One writer says that his discourse was “pestilent and prevalent logical,” and that it “tended to atheism,” which doubtless means that he criticised things freely. Two other prominent men were much of his way of thinking. One was a hard-headed and canny Scotchman, William Drummond, who had been governor of the Albemarle colony in Carolina.[42] The other was Richard Lawrence, an Oxford graduate of scholarly tastes, whom an old chronicler has labelled for posterity as “thoughtful Mr. Lawrence.” Both Drummond and Lawrence were wealthy men, and lived, it is said, in the two best built and best furnished houses in Jamestown, which, it should be remembered, had scarcely more than a score of houses all told.

[Sidenote: Bacon’s plantation attacked, May, 1676.]

[Sidenote: He defeats the Indians.]

Beside the estate where Bacon lived, he had another one farther up, on the site still marked by the name “Bacon Quarter Branch” in the suburbs of Richmond. “If the redskins meddle with me,” quoth the fiery young man, “damn my blood but I’ll harry them, commission or no commission!” One May morning in 1676 news came to Curl’s Wharf that the Indians had attacked the upper estate, and killed Bacon’s overseer and one of his servants. A crowd of armed planters on horseback assembled, and offered to march under Bacon’s lead. He made an eloquent speech, accepted the command, and sent a courier to the governor to ask for a commission. Berkeley returned an evasive answer, whereupon Bacon sent him a polite note, thanking him for the promised commission, and forthwith started on his campaign. He had not gone many miles when a proclamation from the governor overtook him, commanding the party to disperse. A few obeyed; the rest kept on their way and inflicted a severe defeat upon the Indians. Then Bacon and his volunteers marched homeward.[43]

[Sidenote: Election of a new House of Burgesses.]

[Sidenote: Arrest of Bacon.]

Meanwhile the indignant Berkeley had gathered a troop of horse and taken the field in person to arrest this refractory young man. But suddenly came the news that the whole York peninsula was in revolt. The governor must needs hasten back to Jamestown, where he soon realized that if he would avoid civil war he must dissolve his moss-grown House of Burgesses and issue writs for a new election. This was done. In anticipation of such an emergency, an act had been passed in 1670 restricting the suffrage by a property qualification, which had called forth much indignation, since previously universal suffrage had prevailed. In this excited election of 1676 the restriction was openly disregarded in many places, and unqualified persons voted illegally. Bacon offered himself as a candidate for Henrico County and was elected by a large majority. As he drew near to Jamestown in his sloop with thirty followers, a war-ship lay at anchor awaiting him, and the high sheriff arrested him with his whole party. He was taken into the brick State House and confronted with the governor, who simply said, “Mr. Bacon, have you forgot to be a gentleman?” “No, may it please your honour,” said Bacon. “Very well,” said Berkeley, “then I’ll take your parole.” This was discreet in the governor, since the election had gone so heavily against him. Bacon was released and went to lodge in the house of Richard Lawrence.

[Sidenote: “Thoughtful” Mr. Lawrence.]

This “thoughtful” gentleman, the Oxford scholar, “for wit, learning, and sobriety equalled by few,” is said to have “kept an ordinary,” while his house was one of the best in Jamestown. It should be remembered that the permanent residents in the town numbered less than a hundred,[44] while the sessions of the assembly brought a great influx of temporary sojourners, so that any or every house would be made to serve as a tavern. Some years before, Mr. Lawrence had been “partially treated at law, for a considerable estate on behalf of a corrupt favourite” of Sir William Berkeley; a fact well certified by the testimony of the governor’s friend, Colonel Lee. For this reason Lawrence bore the governor a grudge and spoke of him as a treacherous old villain. It was believed by some people that in the conduct of the rebellion Lawrence was the Mephistopheles and Bacon simply the Faust whom he prompted.

[Sidenote: Bacon’s submission.]

There seems to have been an understanding that, if Bacon were to acknowledge his offence in marching without a commission, he should be received back to his seat in the council, and the governor would give him a commission to go and finish the Indian war. The old Nathaniel Bacon, of King’s Creek, being “a very rich politic man and childless,” and intending to leave his estates to young Nathaniel, succeeded in persuading him, “not without much pains,” to accept the compromise. The old gentleman wrote out a formal recantation, which his young kinsman consented to read in public, and a scene was made of it. The State House was a two-story building in which the burgesses had lately begun sitting apart on the second floor, while the governor and council (in point of dignity the “upper house”) held their session on the first floor. On the 5th of June, 1676, the burgesses were summoned to attend in the council chamber while Berkeley opened parliament. In his opening speech the governor referred to the Indian troubles, and expressed himself with strong emphasis on the slaying of the five envoys: “If they had killed my grandfather and grandmother, my father and mother and all my friends, yet if they had come to treat of peace they ought to have gone in peace!”[45] Then, changing the subject, the governor announced: “If there be joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth, there is joy now, for we have a penitent sinner come before us. Call Mr. Bacon.” The young man knelt at the bar of the assembly and read aloud the prepared paper in which he confessed that he had acted illegally, and offered sureties for future good behaviour. Then said the governor impressively, and thrice repeating the words, “God forgive you! I forgive you.” “And all that were with him,” interposed a member of the council. “Yea,” continued Berkeley, “and all those that were with you.” The sheriff at once released Bacon’s followers, and he took his old seat in the council, while the burgesses filed off upstairs. Our informant, the member for Stafford, tells us that while he was on his way up to the burgesses that afternoon, and through the open door of the council chamber descried “Mr. Bacon on his quondam seat,” it seemed “a marvellous indulgence” to one who had so lately been proscribed as a rebel.

[Sidenote: Governor _vs._ Burgesses.]

[Sidenote: Reform of abuses.]

The governor’s chief dread was the free discussion of affairs in general by a hostile assembly. Now that the Indian imbroglio had brought these new burgesses together, he wanted them to confine their talk to Indian affairs and then go home, but this was not their way of thinking. They aimed, though feebly, at greater independence than heretofore, and the governor’s intent was to frustrate this aim. It was moved by one of his partisans in the House of Burgesses “to entreat the governor would please to assign two of his council to sit with and assist us in our debates, as had been usual.” At this the friends of Bacon scowled, and the member for Stafford ventured to suggest that such aid might not be necessary, whereat there was an uproar. The Berkeleyans urged that “it had been customary and ought not to be omitted,” but a shrewd old assemblyman named Presley replied, “’Tis true it has been customary, but if we have any bad customs amongst us, we are come here to mend ’em.”[46] This happy retort was greeted with laughter, but the Cavalier feeling of loyalty to the king’s representative was still strong, and Berkeley’s friends had their way, apparently in a tumultuous fashion. As the member for Stafford says, the affair “was huddled off without coming to a vote,” so that the burgesses must “submit to be overawed and have every carped at expression carried straight to the governor.” Nevertheless, they went sturdily on to their work of reform, and the acts which they passed most clearly reveal the nature of the evils from which the people had been suffering. They restored universal suffrage; they enacted that vestrymen should be elected by popular vote, and limited their term of office to three years; they reduced the sheriff’s term to a single year; they declared that no person should hold at one and the same time any two of the offices of sheriff, surveyor, escheator, and clerk of court; and they imposed penalties upon the delay of public business and the taking of excessive fees. Councillors with their families, and the families of clergymen, had been exempted from taxation; this odious privilege was now abolished. Sundry trade monopolies were overthrown; two magistrates, Edward Hill and John Stith, were disfranchised for alleged misconduct; and provision was made for a general inspection of public expenses and the proper auditing of accounts.[47]

[Sidenote: An Indian “princess.”]

The Indian troubles were not neglected. Arrangements were made for raising and maintaining an army of 1,000 men, and the aid of friendly Indians was solicited. There was a picturesque scene when the “Queen of Pamunkey” was brought before the House of Burgesses. That interesting squaw sachem appears to have been a descendant of the fierce Opekankano. Her tribe was the same that John Smith had visited on the winter day when he held his pistol to the old warrior’s head, with the terse mandate, “Corn or your life!” That remnant of the Powhatan confederacy was still flourishing in Bacon’s time, and indeed it has survived to the present day, a mongrel compound of Indian and negro, on two small reservations in King William County.[48] The “Queen of Pamunkey” in Bacon’s time commanded about 150 warriors, and what the assembly wanted was to secure their aid in suppressing the hostile Indians. The dusky princess “entered the chamber with a comportment graceful to admiration, bringing on her right hand an Englishman interpreter, and on the left her son, a stripling twenty years of age, she having round her head a plat of black and white wampum peag three inches broad in imitation of a crown, and was clothed in a mantle of dressed deerskins with the hair outwards and the edge cut round six inches deep, which made strings resembling twisted fringe from the shoulders to the feet; thus with grave courtlike gestures and a majestic air in her face she walked up our long room to the lower end of the table, where after a few entreaties she sat down; the interpreter and her son standing by her on either side as they had walked up. Our chairman asked her what men she would lend us for guides in the wilderness and to assist us against our enemy Indians. She spake to the interpreter to inform her what the chairman said (though we believed she understood him). He told us she bid him ask [her] son to whom the English tongue was familiar (and who was reputed the son of an English colonel), yet neither would he speak to or seem to understand the chairman, but, the interpreter told us, he referred all to his mother, who being again urged, she, after a little musing, with an earnest passionate countenance as if tears were ready to gush out, and a fervent sort of expression, made a harangue about a quarter of an hour, often interlacing (with a high shrill voice and vehement passion) these words, _Totapotamoy chepiack!_ i. e. _Totapotamoy dead!_ Colonel Hill, being next me, shook his head. I asked him what was the matter. He told me all she said was too true, to our shame, and that his father was general in that battle where divers years before[49] Totapotamoy her husband had led a hundred of his Indians in help to the English against our former enemy Indians, and was there slain with most of his men; for which no compensation at all had been to that day rendered to her, wherewith she now upbraided us.”

[Sidenote: The chairman’s rudeness.]

The candid member for Stafford calls the chairman of the committee morose and rude for not so much as “advancing one cold word towards assuaging the anger and grief” of the squaw sachem. Having once obtained a favour and so ill requited it, the white men in an emergency were now suppliants for further good offices of the same sort. But disregarding all this, the chairman imperiously demanded to be informed how many Indians she would now contribute. A look of angry disdain passed over the cinnamon face; she turned her head away and “sat mute till that same question being pressed a third time, she, not returning her face to the board, answered with a low slighting voice in our own language, _Six!_ but, being further importuned, she, sitting a little while sullen, without uttering a word between, said, _Twelve!_ ... and so rose up and walked gravely away, as not pleased with her treatment.”

[Sidenote: Bacon’s flight.]

[Sidenote: His return.]

Small wisdom was shown in this mean and discourteous treatment of a useful ally, but men’s thoughts were at once abruptly turned from such matters. “One morning early a bruit ran about the town, Bacon is fled! Bacon is fled!” and for the moment Indian alliances and legislative reforms were alike forgotten. Mr. Lawrence’s house was searched at daybreak, but his lodger had gone. Not only had the governor withheld the expected commission, but the air was heavy with suspicion of treachery. The elder Bacon, of King’s Creek, who was fond of “this uneasy cousin” without approving his conduct, secretly informed him that his life was in danger at Jamestown. So the young man slipped away to his estate at Curl’s, and within a few days marched back upon Jamestown at the head of 600 men. Berkeley’s utmost efforts could scarcely muster 100 men, of whom we are told that not half could be relied on. Early in the warm June afternoon Bacon halted his troops upon the green before the State House, and walked up toward the building with a little guard of fusileers. The upper windows were filled with peering burgesses, and crowds of expectant people stood about the green. Out from the door came the old white-haired governor, trembling with fury, and plucking open the rich lace upon his bosom, shouted to Bacon, “Here I am! Shoot me! ’Fore God, a fair mark, a fair mark--shoot!” Bacon answered mildly, “No, may it please your honour, we have not come to hurt a hair of your head or of any man’s. We are come for a commission to save our lives from the Indians, which you have so often promised, and now we will have it before we go.”

[Sidenote: The governor intimidated, June, 1676.]

But we are told that after the old man had gone in to talk with his council, Bacon fell into a rage and swore that he would kill them all if the commission were not granted. The fusileers presented their pieces at the windows and yelled, “We will have it! we will have it!” till shortly one of the burgesses shook “a pacifick handkercher” and called down, “you shall have it.” All was soon quiet again. The assembly drew up a memorial to the king, setting forth the grievances of the colony and Bacon’s valuable services; and it made out a commission for him as general of an army to be sent against the Indians. Next day the governor was browbeaten into signing both these papers; but the same ship that carried the memorial to Charles II. carried also a private letter wherein Berkeley told his own story in his own way. The assembly was then dissolved.

[Sidenote: Bacon crushes the Susquehannocks.]

[Sidenote: Berkeley flies to Accomac, and proclaims Bacon a rebel.]

[Sidenote: Bacon’s march to Middle Plantation.]

Bacon was a commander who could move swiftly and strike hard. Within four weeks the remnant of the Susquehannocks had been pretty nearly wiped out of existence, when he heard that the governor had proclaimed him and his followers rebels. It was like a cry of despair from the old man, who felt his power and dignity gone while this young Cromwell rode over him rough-shod. He tried to raise the people in Gloucester, reputed the most loyal of the counties, but his efforts were vain. Ominous groans and calls of “a Bacon! a Bacon!” greeted him, until in anticipation of still worse difficulties he fled across Chesapeake Bay to the Accomac peninsula, launching the proclamation behind him like a Parthian arrow. This was on July 29, and Richard Lawrence carried the news up-stream to Bacon, who was probably somewhere about the North Anna River. The young leader was stung by what he felt to be cruel injustice. “It vexed him to the heart for to think that while he was hunting Indian wolves, tigers, and foxes, which daily destroyed our harmless sheep and lambs, that he and those with him should be pursued with a full cry, as a more savage or a no less ravenous beast.” He quickly marched back at the head of his troops to Middle Plantation, half way between Jamestown and York River, the site where Williamsburg was afterward built. What had best be done was matter of discussion between Bacon and his friends, and the affair began to assume a more questionable and dangerous aspect than before. The Scotch adviser, William Drummond, was a gentleman who did not believe in half measures. When some friend warned him of the danger of rebellion he was heard to reply, “I am in over shoes; I will be over boots!” His wife was equally bold. It was suggested one day that King Charles might by and by have something to say about these proceedings, whereupon Sarah Drummond picked up a stick and broke it in two, exclaiming, “I care no more for the power of England than for this broken straw!” Bacon was advised by Drummond to have Berkeley deposed and the more placable Sir Henry Chicheley put in his place; and as a precedent he cited the thrusting out of Sir John Harvey, forty-one years before. But Bacon preferred a different course of action. First, he issued a manifesto in rejoinder to Berkeley’s proclamation. A few ringing sentences from it will serve as a sample of his peculiar eloquence.

[Sidenote: His manifesto.]

“If virtue be a sin, if piety be guilt, all the principles of morality, goodness and justice be perverted, we must confess that those who are now called Rebels may be in danger of those high imputations. Those loud and several bulls would affright innocents, and render the defence of our brethren and the inquiry into our sad and heavy oppressions Treason. But if there be (as sure there is) a just God to appeal to, if religion and justice be a sanctuary here, if to plead the cause of the oppressed, if sincerely to aim at his Majesty’s honour and the public good without any reservation or by-interest, if to stand in the gap after so much blood of our dear brethren bought and sold, if after the loss of a great part of his Majesty’s colony deserted and dispeopled freely with our lives and estates to endeavour to save the remainders, be treason--God Almighty judge and let guilty die. But since we cannot in our hearts find one single spot of rebellion or treason, or that we have in any manner aimed at subverting the settled government or attempting of the person of any either magistrate or private man, notwithstanding the several reproaches and threats of some who for sinister ends were disaffected to us and censured our innocent and honest designs, and since all people in all places where we have yet been can attest our civil, quiet, peaceable behaviour, far different from that of rebellion [rebellious?] and tumultuous persons, let Truth be bold and all the world know the real foundations of pretended guilt. We appeal to the country itself, what and of what nature their oppressions have been, or by what cabal and mystery the designs of many of those whom we call great men have been transacted and carried on. But let us trace these men in authority and favour to whose hands the dispensation of the country’s wealth has been committed.”[50]

[Sidenote: His arraignment of Berkeley.]

This is the prose of the seventeenth century, which had not learned how to smite the reader’s mind with the short incisive sentences to which we are at the present day accustomed; but there is no mistaking the writer’s passionate earnestness, his straightforward honesty and dauntless courage. As we read, we seem to see the gleam of lightning in those melancholy eyes, and we quite understand how the impetuous youth was a born leader of men. With strong words tumbling from a full heart the manifesto goes on to “trace these men in authority,” these “juggling parasites whose tottering fortunes have been repaired at the public charge.” He points out at some length the character of the public grievances, and appeals to the king with a formal indictment of Sir William Berkeley:--

“For having upon specious pretences of public works raised unjust taxes upon the commonalty for the advancement of private favourites and other sinister ends, but no visible effects in any measure adequate.

“For not having, during the long time of his government, in any measure advanced this hopeful colony either by fortification, towns, or trade.

“For having abused and rendered contemptible the majesty of justice, of advancing to places of judicature scandalous and ignorant favourites.

“For having wronged his Majesty’s prerogative and interest by assuming the monopoly of the beaver trade.

“[For] having in that unjust gain bartered and sold his Majesty’s country and the lives of his loyal subjects to the barbarous heathen.

“For having protected, favoured, and emboldened the Indians against his Majesty’s most loyal subjects, never contriving, requiring or appointing any due or proper means of satisfaction for their many invasions, murders, and robberies committed upon us.”

[Sidenote: “Wicked counsellors.”]

And so on through several further counts. At the close of the indictment nineteen persons are mentioned by name as the governor’s “wicked and pernicious counsellors, aiders and assisters against the commonalty in these our cruel commotions.” Among these names we read those of Sir Henry Chicheley, Richard Lee, Robert Beverley, Nicholas Spencer, and the son of our old friend William Claiborne, who had once been such a thorn in the side of Maryland. The manifesto ends by demanding that Berkeley and all the persons on this list be promptly arrested and confined at Middle Plantation until further orders. Let no man dare aid or harbour any one of them, under penalty of being declared a traitor and losing his estates.

[Sidenote: The oath at Middle Plantation.]

[Sidenote: Defeat of the Indians.]