As it was well fortified, a council of war resolved to burn the only town in Virginia, that it might not afford shelter for an enemy. When the shades of night descended, and the records of the colony had been removed by Drummond to a place of safety, the village was set on fire. Two of the best houses belonged to Lawrence and Drummond; each of them, with his own hand, kindled the flames that were to lay his dwelling in ashes. The little church, the oldest in the dominion, the newly erected statehouse, were consumed. The ruins of the tower of the church, and memorials in the adjacent graveyard, still mark the peninsula of Jamestown.

The burning of the town appears to have been unwarranted; it may have been the rash counsel of despair. It is chiefly this deed that suspends judgment on the character of the insurrection. Leaving the smoking ruins, Bacon hastened to meet the royalists from the Rappahannock. No engagement ensued; the troops in a body joined the patriot party; and Brent, their leader, was left at the mercy of the insurgents. Even the inhabitants of Gloucester gave pledges of adhesion. Nothing remained but to cross the bay, and revolutionize the eastern shore.

During the siege of Jamestown, the insurgent army had been exposed to the dews and night air of the lowlands. Bacon suddenly sickened, struggled vainly with a most malignant disease, and on the first day of October died. Seldom has a political leader been more honored by his friends. "Who is there now," said they, "to plead our cause? His eloquence could animate the coldest hearts; his pen and sword alike compelled the admiration of his foes, and it was but their own guilt that styled him a criminal. His name must bleed for a season; but when time shall bring to Virginia truth crowned with freedom and safe against danger, posterity shall sound his praises."

The death of Bacon left his party without a head. A series of petty insurrections followed; but in Robert Beverley the royalists found an agent superior to any of the remaining insurgents. The ships in the river, including one which had been recovered from the party of Bacon, were at his disposal, and a warfare in detail restored the supremacy of the governor.

Thomas Hansford, a native Virginian, was the first partisan leader whom Beverley surprised. Young, gay, and gallant, impatient of restraint, keenly sensitive to honor, "a valiant stout man and a most resolved rebel," he disdained to shrink from the malice of destiny, and Berkeley condemned him to be hanged. Neither at his trial nor afterward did he show any diminution of fortitude. He demanded no favor, but that "he might be shot like a soldier, and not hanged like a dog." "You die," it was answered, "not as a soldier, but as a rebel." During the short respite after sentence, he reviewed his life, and expressed penitence for every sin. What was charged on him as rebellion, he denied to have been a sin. "Take notice," said he, as he came to the gibbet, “I die a loyal subject and a lover of my country." That country was Virginia.

Having the advantage of naval superiority, a party of royalists entered York river, and surprised the troops that were led by Edmund Cheesman and Thomas Wilford. The latter, a younger son of a royalist knight, who had fallen in the wars for Charles I., a truly brave man, and now by his industry a successful emigrant, lost an eye in the skirmish. "Were I stark blind," said he, "the governor would afford me a guide to the gallows." When Cheesman was arraigned for trial, Berkeley demanded: "Why did you engage in Bacon's designs?" Before the prisoner could frame an answer, his young wife pleaded that he had acted under her influence, and falling on her knees said: "My provocations made my husband join in the cause for which Bacon contended; but for me, he had never done what he has done; let me bear the punishment; but let my husband be pardoned.” She spoke truth; but the governor answered her only with insult.

Offended pride is merciless; it remembers a former affront as proof of weakness, and seeks to restore self-esteem by a flagrant exercise of recovered power. No sentiment of clemency was tolerated. From fear that a jury would bring in verdicts of aquittal, men were hurried to death from courtsmartial. "You are very welcome," exulted Berkeley, with a low bow, on meeting William Drummond, as his prisoner; "I

cusers.

am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia; you shall be hanged in half an hour." The patriot, on the twentieth of January, 1677, avowing the part he had acted, was condemned at one o'clock and hanged at four. His children and wife were driven from their home, to depend on the charity of the planters. When it was deemed safe to resort to the civil tribunal, the judges proceeded with the virulence of acA panic paralyzed the juries. Of those put on trial, none escaped being convicted and sent to the gallows. In defiance of remonstrances, executions continued for ten days, till twenty-two had been hanged. Three others had died of cruelty in prison; three more had fled before trial; two had escaped after conviction. "The old fool," said the kindhearted Charles II., with truth, "has taken away more lives in that naked country than I for the murder of my father." And in a public proclamation he censured the conduct of Berkeley, as contrary to his commands and derogatory to his clemency. Nor is it certain when the carnage would have ended, had not the assembly in February voted an address, "that the governor would spill no more blood." "Had we let him alone, he would have hanged half the country," said the member from Northampton to his colleague from Stafford. Berkeley was as rapacious as cruel, amassing property by penalties and confiscations. The king promptly superseded him by a special commission to a lieutenant-governor; but he pleaded his higher authority as governor, and refused to give way. When the fair-minded royal commissioners of inquiry visited him, he sought out the hangman of the colony to drive them from his home to their boat in the river; so that they chose to go on foot to the landing-place. Most peremptory orders arrived for his removal. Guns were fired and bonfires kindled at his departure. Public opinion in England censured his conduct with equal severity; and the report of the commissioners in Virginia was fatal to his reputation. He died soon after he reached England.

The memory of those who have been wronged is always pursued by the ungenerous. England, ambitious of absolute colonial supremacy, could not render justice to the principles by which Bacon was swayed. No printing-press was allowed

in Virginia. To speak ill of Berkeley or his friends was punished by whipping or a fine; to speak or write or publish anything, in favor of the rebels or the rebellion, was made a high misdemeanor; if thrice repeated, was evidence of treason. Every accurate account of the insurrection remained in manuscript till the present century.

On this occasion English troops were first introduced into the English colonies in America. After three years, they were disbanded, and mingled with the people.

The results of Bacon's rebellion were disastrous for Virginia. Her form of government was defined by royal instructions that had been addressed to Berkeley. Assemblies were required to be called but once in two years, and to sit but fourteen days, unless for special reasons. "You shall take care," said the king, "that the members of assembly be elected only by freeholders." In conformity with these instructions, all the acts of Bacon's assembly, except perhaps one which permitted the enslaving of Indians and which was confirmed and renewed, were absolutely repealed, and the former grievances immediately returned. The private levies, unequal and burdensome, were managed by men who combined to defraud; the public revenues were often misapplied; each church was again subjected to a self-perpetuating vestry. Taxes continued to be levied by the poll. The commissioners sent by the king to inquire into the condition of Virginia allowed every district to present its afflictions, but every measure of reform was made void, and every aristocratic feature that had been introduced into the constitution was perpetuated.

In August, 1677, about two years after Virginia had been granted to Arlington and Culpepper, the latter obtained an appointment as its governor for life, and was proclaimed soon after Berkeley's departure. The Ancient Dominion was changed into a proprietary government, and the administration surrendered, as it were, to one of the proprietaries, who at the same time was sole possessor of the neck between the Rappahannock and the Potomac. Culpepper was disposed to regard his office as a sinecure, but the king chid him for remaining in England; and, early in 1680, he made his appearance in his province. His place and his patents he valued

only as property. Clothed by the royal clemency with power to bury past contests, he perverted the office of humanity into a means of enriching himself and increasing his authority. Yet Culpepper was not singular in his selfishness. As the British merchant claimed the monopoly of the commerce of the colonies, as the British manufacturer valued them only as a market for his goods, so British courtiers looked to patronage in America for profit to themselves, or provision for their dependents.

Having, in May, taken the oath of office at Jamestown and organized a council of members friendly to prerogative, the wilful followers of Bacon were disfranchised. To an assembly convened in June, three acts, framed in England and confirmed in advance by the great seal, were proposed for acceptance. The first was of indemnity and oblivion-less clement than had been hoped, yet definitive, and therefore welcome. The second withdrew from the assembly the power of naturalization, and declared it a prerogative of the governor. And the third, still more grievous to colonial liberty, and so hateful to Virginians that it was carried only from hope of pardon for the rebellion, authorized a perpetual export duty of two shillings a hogshead on tobacco, and granted the proceeds to the king for the support of government. The royal revenue thus provided was ample and was perpetual.

The salary of the governor of Virginia had been a thousand pounds for Lord Culpepper it was doubled, because he was a peer. A further grant was made for house-rent. Perquisites of every kind were sought for and increased. Nay, the peer was not an honest man. He defrauded the soldiers of a part of their wages by an arbitrary change in the value of current coin. Having employed the summer profitably, in the month of August he sailed for England from Boston.

The low price of tobacco left the planter without hope. With little regard to its own powers, it petitioned the king to prohibit by proclamation the planting of tobacco in the colonies for one year. The assembly had attempted by legislation to call towns into being and to cherish manufactures.

In 1682, Culpepper returned to reduce Virginia to quiet, and to promote his own interests as proprietor of the North