What Bacon, Lawrence, Drummond, Hansford, and others really hoped--whether they forecasted a republican Virginia finally at peace and prosperous--whether they saw in a vision a new capital, perhaps at Middle Plantation, perhaps at the Falls of the Far West, a capital that should be without old, tyrannic memories--cannot now be said. However it all may be, they put torch to the old capital town and soon saw it consumed, for it was no great place, and not hard to burn.
Jamestown had hardly ceased to smoke when news came that loyalists under Colonel Brent were gathering in northern counties. Bacon, now ill but energetic to the end, turned with promptness to meet this new alarm. He crossed the York and marched northward through Gloucester County. But the rival forces did not come to a fight. Brent's men deserted by the double handful. They came into Bacon's ranks "resolving with the Persians to go and worship the rising sun." Or, hanging fire, reluctant to commit themselves either way, they melted from Brent, running homeward by every road. Bacon, with an enlarged, not lessened army, drew back into Gloucester. Revolutionary fortunes shone fair in prospect. Yet it was but the moment of brief, deceptive bloom before decay and fall.
At this critical moment Bacon fell sick and died. Some said that he was poisoned, but that has never been proved. The illness that had attacked him during his siege of Jamestown and that held on after his victory seems to have sufficed for his taking off. In Gloucester County he "surrendered up that fort he was no longer able to keep, into the hands of that grim and all-conquering Captaine Death." His body was buried, says the old account, "but where deposited till the Generall day not knowne, only to those who are resolutely silent in that particular."
With Bacon's death there fell to pieces all this hopeful or unhopeful movement. Lawrence might have a subtle head and Drummond the courage to persevere; Hansford, Cheeseman, Bland, and others might have varied abilities. But the passionate and determined Bacon had been the organ of action; Bacon's the eloquence that could bring to the cause men with property to give as well as men with life to lose. It is a question how soon, had Bacon not died, must have failed his attempt at revolution, desperate because so premature.
Back came Berkeley from Accomac, his turbulent enemy thus removed. All who from the first had held with the King's Governor now rode emboldened. Many who had shouted more or less loudly for the rising star, now that it was so untimely set, made easy obeisance to the old sun. A great number who had wavered in the wind now declared that they had done no such thing, but had always stood steadfast for the ancient powers.
The old Governor, who might once have been magnanimous, was changed for the worse. He had been withstood; he would punish. He now gave full rein to his passionate temper, his bigotry for the throne, and his feeling of personal wrong. He began in Virginia to outlaw and arrest rebels, and to doom them to hasty trials and executions. There was no longer a united army to meet, but only groups and individuals striving for safety in flight or hiding.
Hansford was early taken and hanged with two lieutenants of Bacon, Wilford and Farlow. Cheeseman died in prison. Drummond was taken in the swamps of the Chickahominy and carried before the Governor. Berkeley brought his hands together. "Mr. Drummond, 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!" Not in half an hour, but on the same day he was hanged, imperturbable Scot to the last. Lawrence, held by many to have been more than Bacon the true author of the attempt, either put an end to himself or escaped northward, for he disappears from history. "The last account of Mr. Lawrence was from an uppermost plantation whence he and four other desperadoes with horses, pistols, etc., marched away in a snow ankledeep."
They "were thought to have cast themselves into a' branch of some river, rather than to be treated like Drummond. "Thus came to early and untimely end the ringleaders of Bacon's Rebellion. In all, by the Governor's command, thirty-seven men suffered death by hanging.
There comes to us, down the centuries, the comment of that King for whom Berkeley was so zealous, a man who fell behind his colonial Governor in singleness of interest but excelled him in good nature. "That old fool," said the second Charles, "has hanged more men in that naked country than I have done for the murder of my father!"
That letter which Berkeley had written some months before to his sovereign about the "waters of rebellion" was now seen to have borne fruit. In January, while the Governor was yet running down fugitives, confiscating lands, and hanging "traitors," a small fleet from England sailed in, bringing a regiment of "Red Coates," and with them three commissioners charged with the duty of bringing order out of confusion. These commissioners, bearing the King's proclamation of pardon to all upon submission, were kinder than the irascible and vindictive Governor of Virginia, and they succeeded at last in restraining his fury. They made their report to England, and after some months obtained a second royal proclamation censuring Berkeley's vengeful course, "so derogatory to our princely clemency," abrogating the Assembly's more violent acts, and extending full pardon to all concerned in the late "rebellion," saving only the arch-rebel Bacon--to whom perhaps it now made little difference if they pardoned him or not.
