Volume 1, Chapter 11, Bacon's Rebellion. Why? Why revolution?
This question is asked in fascination by contemporary observers and historians of every revolution in history.
What were the reasons, the true motives behind any given revolution?
The tendency of historians of every revolution, Bacon's Rebellion included,
has been to present a simplistic and black and white version of the drives behind the revolutionary forces.
Thus, the orthodox version holds Nathaniel Bacon to have been a conscious torchbearer of the later American Revolution,
battling for liberty and against English oppression.
The version of revisionist history marks down Bacon as an unprincipled and Indian-hating demagogue rebelling against the wise statesman Berkeley. Neither version can be accepted as such.
The very search by observers and historians for purity and unmixed motives in a revolution betrays an unrealistic naïveté.
Revolutions are mighty upheavals made by a mass of people, people who are willing to rupture the settled habits of a lifetime, including, especially, the habit of obedience to an existing government.
They are made by people willing to turn from the narrow pursuits of their daily lives to
battle vigorously and even violently together in a more general cause.
Because a revolution is a sudden upheaval by masses of men, one cannot treat the motives
of every participant as identical, nor can one treat a revolution as somehow planned
and ordered in advance.
On the contrary, one of the major characteristics of a revolution is its dynamism, its rapid
and accelerating movement in one of several competing directions.
Indeed, the enormous sense of exhilaration or of fear, depending on one's personal values
and one's place in the social structure, generated by a revolution is precisely due
due to its unfreezing of the political and social order, its smashing of the old order,
of the fixed and relatively stagnant political structure, its transvaluation of values, its
replacement of reigning fixity with a sense of openness and dynamism.
Hope, especially among those submerged by the existing system, replaces hopelessness
and despair.
The counterpart of this sudden advent of unlimited social horizons is uncertainty.
For if the massive gates of the political structure are at last temporarily opened,
what path will the people now take?
Indeed, the ever-changing and developing revolution will take paths and entail consequences, perhaps
only dimly, if at all, seen by its original leaders.
A revolution, therefore, cannot be gauged simply by the motivations of its initiators.
The paths taken by the revolution will be determined not merely by these motives but
by the resultant of the motives and values of the contending sides as they began and
as they change in the course of the struggle, clashing with and interacting upon the given
and Social and Political Structure. In short, by the interaction of the various subjective
values and the objective institutional conditions of the day. For masses of men to turn from
their daily lives to hurl themselves against existing habits and the extant might of a
ruling government requires an accumulation of significant grievances and tensions. No
No revolution begins in a day and on arbitrary whim.
The grievances of important numbers of people against the state pile up, accumulate, form
an extremely dry forest waiting for a spark to ignite the conflagration.
That spark is the crisis situation, which may be intrinsically minor or only distantly
related to the basic grievances, but it provides the catalyst, the emotional impetus for the
This analysis of revolution sheds light on two common but misleading historical notions about the genesis of revolutions in colonial America.
Conservative historians have stressed that revolution in America was unique, in contrast to radical European revolutions.
American rebellion came only in reaction to new acts of oppression by the government.
American revolutions were, therefore, uniquely conservative, reacting against the disruption of the status quo by new acts of tyranny by the state.
But this thesis misconceives the very nature of revolution.
Revolutions, as we have indicated, do not spring up suddenly and in vacuo. Almost all
revolutions, European or American, are ignited by new acts of oppression by the government.
Revolutions in America, and certainly this was true of Bacon's Rebellion, were not more
conservative than any other. And since revolution is the polar archetype of an anti-conservative
Neither, incidentally, can we credit the myth engendered by neo-Marxian historians that revolutions like Bacon's Rebellion were class struggles of the poor against the rich, of the small farmers against the wealthy oligarchs.
The revolution was directed against a ruling oligarchy, to be sure, but an oligarchy not of the wealthy, but of certain wealthy, who had gained control of the privileges to be obtained from government.
As we have pointed out, the bacons and birds were large planters, and the revolution was a rebellion of virtually all the people, wealthy and poor, of all occupations, who were not part of the privileged clique.
This was a rebellion not against a Marxian ruling class, but against what might be called a ruling caste.
No common purity of doctrine or motive can be found among the bacon rebels, or for that matter in the succeeding rebellions of the late 17th century in the other American colonies.
But the bulk of their grievances were certainly libertarian. A protest of the rights and liberties of the people against the tyranny of the English government and of its Virginia agency.
We have seen the accumulation of grievances against English mercantilist restrictions
on Virginian trade and property rights, increasing taxation, monopolizing of trade by political
privilege, repeated attempts to impose feudal land holdings, tightening rule by the governor
and his allied oligarchs, infringements of home rule and local liberties, and, to a far
For a lesser extent, persecution of religious minorities.
On the other hand, there is no denying that some of the grievances and motives of the
rebels were the reverse of libertarian, hatred of the Indians and a desire for land grabbing,
or as in the allied and later rebellions in neighboring Maryland, hatred of Roman Catholicism.
Their motive in later rebellion was a desire for compulsory cartel in unsound and desperate
attempts to force a rise in tobacco prices.
But even though the spark of Bacon's rebellion came from an anti-libertarian motif, pursuit
of more rigorous war against the Indians, and Bacon's motives were originally limited
to this, it is also true that as the rebellion developed and the dynamics of a revolutionary
situation progressed, the other basic grievances came to the fore and found expression, even
in the case of Bacon himself.
It should also be recognized that any revolt against a tyrannical state, other things being
and Equal is, ipso facto, a libertarian move. This is all the more true because even a revolution
that fails, as did Bacon's, gives the people a training ground and a tradition of revolution
that may later develop into a revolution more extensively and clearly founded on libertarian
motives. If cherished in later tradition, a revolution will decrease the awe in which
which the constituted authority is held by the populace and in that way will increase
the chance of a later revolt against tyranny. Overall, therefore, Bacon's rebellion may
be judged as a step forward to liberty and even a microcosm of the American Revolution.
But despite, rather than because of, the motives of Bacon himself and of the original leaders.
Nathaniel Bacon was scarcely a heroic and conscious torchbearer of liberty and yet the dynamics of the revolutionary movement that he brought into being forged such a torch out of his rebellion.
After the start of the mutiny at Jordan's Point, Berkeley, having tried to stop the movement, denounced Bacon and his followers as rebels and mutineers and proceeded west against them.
He missed Bacon, however, who had gone north to New Kent County to gather men who were also ripe for rebellion.
Meanwhile, masses of Virginians began to join Bacon on the most hysterical and bigoted grounds.
Berkeley's unfortunate act of War of March 1676 had declared war not only against enemy Indians, but just as roundly against neutrals.
The peaceful and neutral Pamunkey Indians, fearful and unhappy at this prospect, and terrorized by the Baconians, fled to the wilderness of Dragon Swamp on the Gloucester Peninsula.
To many Virginians, it was incomprehensible that Berkeley should proclaim man as traitors whose only crime seemed to be hard-line pursuit of victory against all Indians.
At the same time, Berkeley was clearly soft on the Pamunkeys.
The protests poured in. How can anyone tell friendly Indians from enemy Indians? Are not the Indians all of a color?
Thus, racism and war hysteria formed a potent combination to sweep away reason.
As a time-honored phrase of the racist, you can't tell one from another, became logically transmuted into,
The only good Indian is a dead Indian. Or, as the Baconian rebels put it, away with these distinctions. We will have war with all Indians which come not in with their arms, and give hostages for their fidelity, and to aid against all others. We will spare none. If we must be hanged for rebels for killing those that will destroy us, let them hang us.
Alarmed, Berkeley rushed back to the Capitol to appease the people called an election at
long last for the House of Burgesses. The election was called in mid-May for a session
to begin in early June. This was the first election since the beginning of Berkeley's
second reign. This in itself was a victory against tyranny. Meanwhile, Bacon and his
band of Indian fighters proceeded against the Susquehannocks, but soon veered their
Pay attention, as usual, to the friendly but far less powerful Okaniches, whom Bacon had
even persuaded to attack the Susquehannocks. The Okaniches had given Bacon's exhausted
and depleted band food and shelter, and had attacked the Susquehannocks themselves in
Bacon's behalf. The Okaniches presented their prisoners to Bacon, and the prisoners were
were duly tortured and killed. A dispute, however, arose over the plunder from the raid
and especially over a half-dozen friendly mannequin and anilectin Indians who had been
prisoners of the Susquehannocks and had helped the Okaniches destroy the Susquehanna camp.
The Okaniches naturally wanted to keep the plunder from the Susquehannock raid and to
To free the friendly Indians they had liberated, but Bacon demanded the plunder for himself
and insisted that the mannequins and analectins be turned over to him as slaves.
Bacon fell into a dispute with the Okonichi chief, who balked at selling food to his men,
whereupon Bacon launched a surprise attack on the Indians, burning and slaughtering over
a hundred Indian men, women and children, and kidnapping others.
To Bacon went the plunder and, in addition, an Okonichi stock of valuable beaver fur.
Some contemporary accounts assert the fur was Bacon's major aim in the surprise attack.
In any case, Bacon returned from this irrelevant act of butchery as the leader of a band of
heroes in the eyes of the bulk of the Virginia people and insisted more than ever that all
Undaunted by Berkeley's denunciation of Bacon for treason and rebellion and his expulsion
of Bacon from the Council, the free men of Henrico County unanimously elected Bacon and
his associate, James Cruz, as virgesses.
Joining the inner councils of Bacon's rebellion were two wealthy and influential Virginians,
William Drummond, tobacco planter and former governor of Albemarle Colony, and the intellectual
Richard Lawrence, who had lost land through legal plunder to a favorite of Berkeley's.
Ignoring the election results, Berkeley sent an armed force to capture Bacon and bring
him back to Jamestown.
Here ensued a patently spurious reconciliation scene, with Bacon in open assembly confessing
The House of Burgesses, largely supporters of Bacon and certainly anti-Berkeley, did very little.
A few fable essays in reform were quickly stifled by the domineering governor,
except for acts restricting trade with the Indians and imposing dictates on avowedly friendly Indians
by forbidding them to hunt with guns, even on their own reservations.
Reconciliation, the assembly did little and certainly nothing against Berkeley. Indeed,
they saw fit to eulogize Berkeley's rule. Bacon warned of a plot on his life and seeing
how reconciliation had only succeeded in dangerously weakening the revolutionary movement, calming
the people and taming the assembly, escaped from Jamestown. He still lacked official sanction
to Fight Indians. Returning home, Bacon raised an armed troop and on June 23rd invaded Jamestown,
where under bayonet he forced Berkeley and the assembly to grant him the commission to
fight the Indians, the original point of the rebellion. But now the Baconian assembly,
emboldened by the Bacon victory, pushed through in a few days a series of reform measures
that became known as Bacon's Laws. Several of these measures were invasive of liberty,
the inevitable laws for more stringent war and regulation against the Indians, prohibition
on the export of corn, restrictions on the sale of liquor. But the bulk of the laws were
in the libertarian direction, requiring annual rotation of the powerful office of sheriff,
prohibiting anyone from holding two local offices at the same time, penalizing excessive
charges levied by public officials, providing for triennial elections for the local vestry
boards by the freemen of the parish, thus ending the closed oligarchal control of the
vestries.
Moreover, the assembly ended the absolute control of the appointed justices of the peace,
Finding in Secret Conclave over County Taxes and Expenditures.
Annual election by all the free men was provided for choosing an equal number of representatives
to sit with the judges imposing the county levies and expenditures.
Furthermore, the law of 1670, taking the voting for Burgesses away from non-land-holding
free men was repealed.
Thus, a true revolution had developed from a mere movement to crush Indians more efficiently.
Indeed, some leading conservatives hinted darkly of anarchy and menace to private property.
One leading Berkleyan sneered that Bacon's followers were too poor to pay taxes and therefore
wanted none levied at all.
In the meanwhile, Bacon protested that revolution was farthest from his mind, as perhaps he
it was, that all he wanted was to fight the Indians. Armed with his coveted commission,
he proceeded west to do so. Governor Berkeley, however, was not content with this relatively
peaceful resolution of the problem, and he determined on civil war. Berkeley once more
cried treason and rebellion against Bacon, and proceeded into Gloucester County to raise
is a counter-revolutionary armed force.
Hearing of this treachery, Bacon and his men marched eastward, where the militia of
Gloucester County mutinied and to the governor's face chanted, Bacon, Bacon, Bacon!
Berkeley, in disgrace and opposed by the bulk of the people, fled to obscure Acomac County
on the eastern shore, where he lamented, How miserable that man is that governs a people!
of People. Bacon was now impelled by the logic of events to a radical and revolutionary position,
for despite his wishes, he was now irrevocably a rebel against Governor Berkeley. And since
Berkeley was the agent of the King, a rebel against the King of England as well. The logic
of events now compelled Bacon to favor total independence from England. For him, it was
was now independence or death. So swiftly had the dynamic of revolution pushed events forward
that the man who just three months before had had no thoughts of rebellion, who only
a few weeks before had only wished to crush Indians more effectively, was now forced to
fight for the independence of Virginia from the crown.
The grievances were abounding in neighboring Maryland and Albemarle.
Bacon began to envisage a mighty Al-Chesapeake uprising, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina,
to gain freedom from subjection to England.
The neighboring colonies were indeed ripe for rebellion.
And William Drummond, a leading Baconian and former governor of North Carolina, helped
Thus stir up a rebel movement there led by John Culpepper, who visited Jamestown during
the turbulent rebellion of 1676. But Bacon had a critical problem. If the choice was
only independence or death for him, that choice did not face the rest of the Virginians. Thus,
one of Bacon's followers on hearing him talk of plans to fight English troops exclaimed,
Sir, you speak as though you designed a total defection from His Majesty and our country.
Why have not many princes lost their dominions so?
Bacon calmly replied.
Last cherry of a radical policy was Sarah, wife of William Drummond, who, breaking a
stick in two, exclaimed, I care no more for the power of England than for this broken
straw.
Bacon now faced a two-fold chore, the cementing of the Virginian people behind the new, difficult
and radical task, and the smashing of the Berkeley forces before they could rally.
Unfortunately, it is not surprising that a man dedicated to a hard line against the Indians
would not hesitate in a hard line against his own people.
Bacon began to wield the weapon of the compulsory public loyalty oath from his headquarters
Years at the Middle Plantation, later Williamsburg, Bacon issued a call for a convention of the
leading men of the colony. Once at the convention, Bacon issued a manifesto, grandiosely entitled
the Declaration of the People, demanding surrender of Berkeley in nineteen of his closest cohorts
in four days. Refusal to surrender would mean arrest for treason and confiscation of property.
In the Declaration, several accusations were leveled against Berkeley.
One, that upon spacious pretense of public works, he raised great unjust taxes upon the
commonality.
Two, advancing favorites to high public offices.
Three, monopolizing the beaver trade with Indians.
Four, being pro-Indian.
Bacon now assumed dictatorial authority over the colony.
He forced the Convention to subscribe to an oath of allegiance.
The first clause caused no trouble, a pledge not to join Berkeley's forces.
The second part caused a great deal of trouble, a pledge to oppose any English forces sent
to aid Berkeley.
The Virginians balked at open revolution against the Crown.
Bacon, however, locked the doors and forced the assembled men to take the entire oath.
Bacon now proceeded to terrorize the mass of Virginians to take the same oath and arrested any who refused.
Terror is a poor way to persuade someone to be loyal.
And from this moment, Bacon's formerly great popularity in the colony began to ebb.
At this juncture, when smashing Berkeley's forces was the order of the day, Bacon permitted
himself to be diverted to the old sport of killing Indians. Instead of pursuing the Indian
War against the tribes actually fighting, Bacon again found it convenient to attack
the hapless and neutral Pamunkey Indians, who had fled to the swamps and wilderness
of Clouster County to be left alone.
After wasting many days trying to find the Pamunkeys in the swamps, and of course plundering
as they went, Bacon's forces found the Pamunkeys' camp and plundered, captured and slaughtered
the unresisting Indians.
Bacon was a hero once more.
While Bacon was off to raid the Pamunkeys, Berkeley had seized the opportunity to win
in Control of the Fleet, Jamestown and the Principal River Areas.
In contrast to Bacon's reliance upon volunteers for his army, Berkeley raised his counter-revolutionary
force by the promise of plunder from the estates of those who had taken Bacon's oath, and
the promise of subsidy and exemption from virtually all taxes. Each party was soon promising
and liberty to the servants of the opposing side.
Marching on Jamestown again, Bacon now drove Berkeley out of the capital.
In the course of the battle, Bacon used a new stratagem.
He kidnapped some of the wives of the Berkeley leaders and threatened to place them in the
front line if the Berkeley forces fired upon their fortifications.
and the repeated use of aggressive violence spirals inevitably upward and outward.
So with Nathaniel Bacon Jr.
Beginning with the Indians, Bacon increasingly extended despotism and violence against Virginia citizens.
After capturing Jamestown, Bacon burned it totally to the ground
ground on the flimsy excuse of hypothetical military necessity.
The forces of Giles Brent, now Colonel, in the northern counties, which had shifted from
Bacon's to Berkeley's cause, were marching south, but Brent's men deserted him completely
when they heard of Bacon's victory at Jamestown.
After driving Berkeley's forces back to the eastern shore, Bacon enforced his loyalty
on more masses of people, seized provisions for his army from the populace and punished several citizens by martial law.
Even his cousin, Nathaniel Bacon Sr., was not spared the plunder meted out to the leading opponents of the rebellion,
even though the elder Bacon had previously warned his cousin of an attempt on his life.
The elder Bacon's property was looted to the loss of a thousand pounds.
Justice Bacon made ready to proceed against Berkeley and the Eastern Shore. This leader of revolution fell ill and died on October 26, 1676.
In a few short months, he had brought Virginia and perhaps the neighboring colonies to the brink of revolutionary independence from Great Britain.
of Britain. Who knows what might have happened had Bacon lived. Without the inspiration provided
by their leader, the rebellion fell apart and Berkeley's forces conquered the disorganized
rebel units. One of the last of the rebel bands to yield was a group of 400 negro slaves
and white servants fighting for their freedom in Bacon's army. Captain Thomas Grantham
Some of the Berkley forces persuaded them to disarm by promising them their freedom,
after which he delivered them back to their masters.
Governor Berkley was not a forgiving soul, and he now instituted a veritable reign of
terror in Virginia. As he defeated each of the rebel units, he court-martialed and hanged
the leaders. Neither was Berkley very discriminating in his court-martialing and hanging parties.
One of them, he included Thomas Hall, clerk of New Kent County, who had never taken up arms in the rebellion, but who had angered Berkeley in other matters.
It was enough, however, that Hall, by diverse writings under his own hand and most notorious actor, aided and assisted in the rebellion.
One of the hanged rebels protested, no doubt truthfully, that he had always been a loyal subject of the Crown and only meant to take up arms against Indians.
When the eminent William Drummond, who had incurred the dislike of Berkeley even before the year's events, was captured in the swamps and dragged in before the Governor, Berkeley gloated, 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."
To which Drummond steadfastly replied, I expect no mercy from you. I have followed the lead of my conscience and done what I might to free my country from oppression.
Allowing for a few hours missed, the promise was indeed carried out in Drummond's ring confiscated by Berkeley for good measure.
Most defiant of the captured rebels was Anthony Arnold, who delivered a trenchant attack on the rights of kings.
They have no rights but what they got by conquest and the sword, and he that can by force of the sword deprive them of it has as good and just a title to it as the king himself.
If the king should deny to do me right, I would make no more to sheath my sword in his heart or bowels than that of my mortal enemies.
The court hung the horrible, resolved rebel and traitor, Arnold, in chains, openly regretting that it could not draw and quarter him as well.
Berkeley also proceeded to confiscate the estates of one rebel after another, thus recouping his own personal fortunes.
Unfortunately for Berkeley's uninterrupted pleasure, the King's commissioners arrived in January with a general pardon for all rebels.
What is more, the commissioners promised that they would redress the grievances of the people.
The King further ordered Berkeley back to England, but Berkeley, defying the commissioners, continued imposing his own loyalty oaths, seizing more property for his own use and delaying publication of the King's pardon.
He finally published the pardon, but exempted 18 nameless people, an excellent way of cowing the Virginians so as to keep them from bearing their grievances to the commissioners.
Civil trials for treason proceeded apace and several more were hanged.
Furthermore, the subservient assembly now met and quickly repealed all of the bold acts of liberal reform of Bacon's assembly of June 1676.
Under Berkeley's direction, the assembly proceeded to hang many more rebels by acts of attainder and to fine, imprison, banish and expropriate still more.
Some rebels were ordered to pay heavy fines and appear before the assembly with halters around their necks, kneeling to repent of their guilt and beg for their lives. If freed by the assembly, they were forced to repeat the same ordeal before the county court. All leading supporters of the rebellion were barred thereafter from holding public office.
Even the hapless indentured servants who followed Bacon were sentenced to imprisonment whenever their terms of service should expire.
Anyone who had written or spoken anything favoring the rebellion or even criticizing anyone in authority received heavy fines, the pillory, flogging, or branding on the forehead.
Yet the jails were not filled, being kept clear by banishments and executions.
Some hapless Virginians were caught in the middle of the Civil War, thus Otto Thorpe.
Wishing not to sign Bacon's compulsory loyalty oath, Thorpe finally did so when his wife was threatened.
Later in the rebellion, Thorpe refused to aid Bacon further and had his property confiscated by the rebels as a consequence.
Then, when Berkeley returned to power, he sent Thorpe to jail for swearing to the Baconian oath and confiscated his property once more.
The commissioners sadly concluded that no peace could come to the colony, either internally or with the Indians, until Berkeley had been completely removed from his post and the general pardon carried out.
The only real supporters of Berkeley in his fanatic campaign of vengeance were 20 friends
of his among the oligarchy known as the Green Spring faction.
The commissioners reported that the Green Spring group was continually pleading for the
punishment of the guilty, who were little less than the whole country.
The commissioners indeed estimated that of all the people in Virginia, who now numbered
about 40,000. Only 500 had never supported the rebellion. Finally, the assembly, under
pressures of the commissioners, forced the reluctant Berkeley to stop the hangings. As
one assemblyman stated, if not for this interference, the governor would have hanged half the country.
Under pressure of the commissioners, the assembly of February 1677 also reenacted a few of the
the most innocuous of the reform laws of the previous year.
Despite the intimidation and terror, a large number of grievances were sent to the assembly
and the commissioners by the people of Virginia.
The most common grievance concerned the levying of heavy and unjust taxes by officials, taxes
that were used for expenditures over which the people had no control.
Typical was a petition from Surrey County which prayed the authorities to ease us, His Majesty's poor subjects, of our great burdens and taxes.
The petition asked,
Whereas there yearly came a great public levy from James City, we never knew for what to the great grief and dissatisfaction of the poor upon whose shoulders the levy chiefly lay.
We most humbly pray that for the future the collectors of the levy, who instead of satisfaction were wont to give churlish answers, may be obliged to give an account in writing what the levy is for to any who shall desire it.
The Surrey County Petition also humbly asked for a free election for every assembly so that they could find redress for their grievances.
Not surprisingly, this humble petition received its typical answer.
Severe punishment for the petitioners by the assembly, for the high crime of speaking or writing disrespectfully of those in authority.
Other grievances mentioned in petitions were favoritism, illegal fees charged by local officials, restriction of the right to vote, monopoly of the Indian trade, and the arbitrary seizing of property by the government.
While the commissioners were hardly zealous in defending the people against Berkeley's
oppression, they at least arranged a peace with the Indians, and the Great Indian War
was happily ended.
Finally the commissioners decided to carry the king's order into effect, and they ousted
Berkeley.
Leaving for England, Berkeley made his exit in characteristic fashion, kicking and snarling
all the way, and bitterly denouncing the ambition, incompetence, and ignorance of the appointed
Lieutenant Governor left in charge. At long last, on May 5, 1677, Berkeley embarked
for England, dying soon after his arrival. Perhaps Berkeley's most appropriate epitaph
was the reported comment on the Virginia affair by King Charles II. That old fool has hanged
and more men in that naked country than I did here for the murder of my father.
The shadow of Berkeley still fell over the unhappy colony, however, as Virginia, not
knowing of his death, still believed that Berkeley would soon engineer his return.
The colony was still in the hands of Berkeley's henchmen, the Green Spring oligarchs who had
been reestablished in their lucrative and powerful offices.
Many members of this faction were Colonel Philip Ludwell, Colonel Thomas Ballard, Colonel
Edward Hill, and Major Robert Beverly. It also included Colonel John Washington and
Richard Lee. Green Spring's control was especially strong after the commissioners had returned
to England in July. The Green Spring faction ran the council and engineered corrupt elections
to the House of Burgesses. They continued to drag rebels into court to seize their property
and they levied another large poll tax on the colony, again laying the heaviest burden
on the poorest citizens. Petitions from the counties to redress grievances continued to
be punished in the by now traditional manner, severe punishment for statements highly scandalous
and injurious to authority. Finally, in October, news of Berkeley's death arrived in Virginia,
The King was finally able to get his complete and general pardon published. The Baconian
remnants still hiding in the woods were able to emerge and resume their normal lives. But
if Berkeley was at last truly dead, his system was not. Berkeleyism and the Green Spring
faction continued to rule the colony. In fact, the next governor, Thomas Lord Culpepper,
was a relative of Lady Berkeley. The revolution had failed, but it continued to live on in
the hearts of Americans who cherished the memory of its near victory, a beacon light
for future rebellions against tyranny.