defence. Here the principal insurgents gathered; but there were smaller bodies at Greenspring, a place belonging to Berkeley himself, somewhat further down the river; and at an estate belonging to Ba con's cousin, probably in the same neighborhood. The whole insurgent force remaining under arms to garrison these three final strongholds probably numbered not more than four hundred men; while in the region about them now that the death of Bacon led to the appearance of a host of concealed adherents of the Governor, and time-servers who wished to seem so there were at least as many enemies as friends.

Berkeley lost little time in taking advantage of the new turn of

affairs. His first step, when the news of Bacon's death had reached him, had been the sending out of that party which, as already mentioned, had captured and executed several leading revolutionists. But he was making preparations to return in person when he dispatched this preliminary expedition, "a winged messinger, to see if happily the Delluge was any whit abated." Then he ventured out from his "Ark" at Accomac, and appeared in the York River with four ships and "two or three sloops," carrying a force of some one hundred and fifty men. From the people along the lower York he met with no resistance; his return appeared to be taken as a matter of course; and his adherents in Gloucester County volunteered in large numbers

1676.]

PUNISHMENT OF THE REBELS.

315

to help him drive out the still troublesome "vermin" from "their warm Kennil." A proclamation of amnesty followed, from which, however, most of the Baconite leaders still in resistance to his authority were excepted, while the bitterness of his enmity to Lawrence and Drummond was shown by a special mention of them.

the Bacon

party.

Driving out the last stubborn rebels did not prove easy work. They again and again defeated parties sent against them, Final supuntil at last their stronghold at West Point was lost through pression of treachery. Two accounts are given of its surrender: one, that the Governor sent a messenger, one Grantham, who by argu ments and promises persuaded Ingram to deliver up the place; the other, that he wrote to Wakelet, Ingram's second in command, offering him pardon and a reward for the same betrayal of his comrades. Ingram escaped in safety, and Wakelet appears to have received his pay, so that it is probable both were concerned in the matter. But, at all events, the position was given up to Berkeley's officers, together with the

Drummond before Berkeley.

less important strongholds at Greenspring and at Bacon's house. As an organized insurrection, the rebellion was at an end; it lived only in the embittered spirit of the great majority of the people, who had at one time or another been engaged in it, and who, though wanting courage and persistence to carry it on after the death of their leader, still adhered in secret to the cause which he had so nearly made successful.

Of the other chief actors, Lawrence escaped into the wilderness; but Drummond, seeking safety by hiding himself for a time in the swamp of the Chickahominy, was captured there in the dead of

winter, overcome by cold and hunger. On the 20th of January, the Fate of the day after his capture, he was brought before Berkeley at leaders. Bacon's house, the former station of one of the smaller bands of insurgents. The old Governor's triumph had come. This man and Lawrence were regarded by him as his bitterest enemies, and he hated them with a positive ferocity. He greeted the prisoner with a low bow." Mr. Drummond," he said, "you are very welcome; I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia. Mr. Drummond, you shall be hanged in half an hour." Drummond answered with courage and dignity, "What your honor pleases ;" and when, three hours later, his sentence was carried out at Middle Plantation, he met death bravely. He was, says one of the narratives, a sober Scotch gentleman of good repute, and he left a name which few even of his enemies treated with disrespect, except in the one matter of his political action.

Punishments

Berkeley used the power that victory gave him without mercy. For a time there was in Virginia an actual reign of terror, inflicted by and no man knew when he might be seized, condemned, and Berkeley. executed. Drummond's little plantation was seized, and his

Arrival of

ers from

wife and five children were driven from it "to wander in the woods and desarts till they were ready to starve." It was proposed to expose the bones of Bacon hung in chains upon a gibbet; but his body had been so carefully concealed that all attempts to find it proved useless. Punishments of all kinds-fine, confiscation, imprisonment, banishment, and many ingenious minor penalties were inflicted right and left, until even the Governor's friends expostulated. Their counsel would perhaps have been in vain, had not a sudden check of a more powerful sort been put upon the angry knight's revenge. At the end of January, 1677, the tardy assistance sent from England, in reply to Berkeley's petition of many months before, commission- arrived in the James River. But it did not come precisely England. in the form which the Governor's party wished. In the small fleet that anchored below the ruins of the capital was Colonel Herbert Jeffreys, armed with a commission to succeed Sir William in his office, while he, as well as Sir John Berry, the admiral, and Colonel Morrison, who had been Berkeley's substitute for awhile in 1661, brought appointments as commissioners to investigate the causes of the rebellion, and to attend to the settlement of affairs after its suppression. Berkeley was, it is true, to aid them in this work; but in reality his own conduct was under examination, and he found himself at once in the attitude of a defendant. The instructions of the commissioners authorized them to grant amnesty to those who should submit and give bonds for future good behavior, excepting Bacon,

1677.]

THE ROYAL COMMISSIONERS.

317

whose death was not known, of course, when the fleet left England; but still, a discretionary power to punish other leaders and those especially obnoxious was left in their hands.

The English officials put a speedy end to the system of drum-head courts-martial, by which the Governor had brought so many The punish

checked.

of his enemies to execution. From the time of their arrival ments (soon after which an Assembly met at Green Spring) the trials of Baconite prisoners were conducted with due form and caution

elty ceased with the Commissioners' interference. Local courts winked at the means-sometimes ludicrously ingenious-by which the spirit of ignominious punishments was generally evaded, even when the letter was carried out. John Bagwell and Thomas Gordon wore "small tape," and William Potts "Manchester binding," instead of the halters with which they were ordered to appear in public. Some fifty persons were excepted from the amnesty, including those already executed or banished, and acts of attainder were passed against twenty; but it does not appear certain that all the measures decided

The Commissioners'

report.

upon were at all rigidly carried out. In their report, Jeffreys, Morrison, and Berry spoke in the severest terms of Berkeley's course in trying men by martial law after peace had been reëstablished; and their investigation of the charges which the people made against him seems to have been made with a positive leaning toward the side of his accusers. Gradually the country became quieter. Protected by the presence of the Commissioners, the Assembly took a more independent tone, and the Virginians, encouraged for a moment to believe that they had gained something of that redress for which they had hoped, gradually settled back into the quiet life of their plantations. Bacon's rebellion had cost the colony a hundred thousand pounds, the loss of many lives, and months of anarchy; but it had shown the people their own power, and had developed an independence that was to bear fruit long after. When, in October, 1677, the royal Commissioners seized the Assembly's journals for investigation, and that body indignantly protested that "such a power had never been exercised by the King of England, and could not be authorized even by the great seal,” they virtually asserted the principle of colonial legislative rights for which their descendants fought a hundred years later.

Results of the rebellion.

Berkeley returns to England.

When the fleet of the Commissioners returned to England in April, Berkeley went with it, leaving Jeffreys Governor. The old cavalier was ill and broken in spirit. The bitter outbreak of his revenge was possibly, as it was urged on his behalf, a result of the “ "peevishness" and irritability of age. He had one longing left, — to justify his conduct in the eyes of the King, whose approval would have consoled him for all else. But he seems to have been altogether disappointed. Opinion both in Parliament and at court he found to be bitterly against him. It is said by one writer that he was received by Charles with kindness; but it was generally believed that he was treated with entire neglect, and did not see the King at all, sinking rapidly from the time of his arrival, until, in a few weeks, he died broken-hearted and disgraced. There came back to Virginia one who had been his servant on his voyage and till his death, "from whom a report was whispered about, that the King did say, that old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than he had done for the murther of his father."" This speech, says the gossiping writer who records it, coming to the old Governor's ears, hastened his death: So that "he dyed soon after without having seen his Majesty; which shuts up this tragedy."

His illness and death.