NARRATIVES DEALING WITH BACON'S REBELLION II and sent to Powhatan his women, and children such presents, as gave them in general full content. NARRATIVES DEALING WITH BACON'S [No event in the Southern colonies before the Revolution caused greater literary activity, or was more characteristic of the independent temper bred in Englishmen by their new surroundings than the popular uprising in 1676 known as "Bacon's Rebellion." During the English Protectorate, Governor Berkeley, who had taken the Royal side, had been forced to resign his authority. He was reinstated at the Restoration, in 1660, and surpassed his royal master in taxation and in persecution, especially of the Baptists and the Quakers. He abolished also the biennial election of Burgesses. This led to popular discontent, which was intensified by the conduct of King Charles II, who treated Virginia as his personal property, making large grants to court favorites, and countenancing laws that produced great uncertainty and distress among the planters. The assembly, assuming to be a perpetual body, sought to make itself independent by a permanent impost on exported tobacco. All this, added to the corruption, tyranny, and inefficiency of Governor Berkeley, who seemed unwilling to give the colonists adequate protection from raids by the Indians whose trade he sought, produced a growing discontent that needed only the presence of a sturdy leader to burst into overt rebellion. Such a leader was found in Nathaniel Bacon, a young man of wealth and the best English training, who, in defiance of the Governor, took the field against the Indians and was enthusiastically supported by the mass of the people and the smaller planters. This was in April, 1676. In May, Berkeley proclaimed Bacon a traitor. In June, however, the assembly enacted the so-called "Bacon Laws," a series of reform measures, and that leader was appointed commander-in-chief against the Indians. In July the reform party seem to have achieved a legislative triumph, and in August a popular convention which met at Williamsburg voted to sustain Bacon against the Indians and to prevent, if possible, a civil war; but the sudden sickness and death of Bacon in October deprived the popular party of its only efficient leader, and Berkeley reëstablished his tyranny by such general, hurried, and indecent executions that the king, who speedily recalled him to England, is said to have exclaimed, "The old fool has taken more lives in his naked country than I for my father's murder.” The character of Berkeley's administration may be gathered from his often quoted reply to the Commissioners of Plantations (1670): “But, I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels 12 NARRATIVES DEALING WITH BACON'S REBELLION against the best government. God keep us from both." The rebellion which this intolerance caused had a romantic character that appealed to contemporary chroniclers as it has to later romancers. There is an anonymous "History of Bacon's and Ingram's Rebellion,” known as "The Burwell Papers," printed by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1814 and again more correctly in 1866. Though incomplete it is a thoroughly readable narrative, a little pedantic and affected and pronounced in its sympathy with the aristocratic party. The writer has been conjecturally identified with a planter, Cotton of Acquia Creek, possibly the author of a concise account entitled "Strange News from Virginia" (1677). Another short account written in 1705 by a certain T. M., probably Thomas Matthews, a Burgess of Stafford County and a man of genial credulity, furnishes interesting material. But neither of these writers approaches, in literary power, that unknown Bacon's "man" who wrote upon his master the really noble epitaph that follows. This poem, the historian of colonial literature, the late Professor Moses Coit Tyler, pronounced to be a "noble dirge," and it would surely be difficult to produce better verses written in America before the days of Freneau.1] BACON'S DEATH [FROM "THE BURWELL PAPERS." TEXT OF 1866.] BACON having for some time been besieged by sickness, and now not able to hold out any longer, all his strength and provisions being spent, surrendered up that fort he was no longer able to keep, into the hands of that grim and all-conquering captain, Death, after that he had implored the assistance of the abovementioned minister, for the well making his articles of rendition. The only religious duty (as they say) he was observed to perform during these intrigues of affairs, in which he was so considerable an actor, and so much concerned, that rather than he would decline the cause, he became so deeply engaged in the first rise thereof, though much urged by arguments of dehortations by his nearest relations and best friends, that he subjected himself to all those inconveniences that, singly, might bring a man of a more robust frame to his last home. After he was dead he was bemoaned in these following lines, drawn by the man that waited upon his person (as it is said), and who attended his corpse to their burial place; but where deposited till the general day, not 1 All the above documents can be found in Vol. I of Force's "Tracts." BACON'S EPITAPH, MADE BY HIS MAN 13 known, only to those who are resolutely silent in that particular. There was many copies of verses made after his departure, calculated to the latitude of their affections who composed them; as a relish taken from both appetites I have here sent you a couple:1 BACON'S EPITAPH, MADE BY HIS MAN DEATH, Why so cruel? What! no other way Which, through thy tyranny, with him must fall To whom for secret crimes just vengeance owes Him to destroy; whose well tried courage such, Their heartless hearts, nor arms, nor strength could touch. The heathen made, and drew into a flood? Who is 't must plead our cause? nor trump, nor drum Nor deputations; these, alas! are dumb And cannot speak. Our Arms (though ne'er so strong) Will want the aid of his commanding tongue, Which conquer'd more than Cæsar. He o'erthrew Only the outward frame: this could subdue 1 The satiric reply to the "Epitaph" is not reprinted here. 2 I.e. the art of the physician or of the quack - derived from Paracelsus (1493-1541), the Swiss alchemist and physician. See Browning's poem that bears his name. The rugged works of nature. Souls replete Here let him rest; while we this truth report To plead his cause, where he by this doth know ROBERT BEVERLEY [ABOUT Robert Beverley, the most interesting and one of the most important of the early historians of Virginia, not much that is definite is known. Some accounts have it that he was born in that colony about 1675 and died there in 1716. Others place his birth about 1670 and his death about 1735. He was educated in England and in 1697 he succeeded his father, Major Robert Beverley, as Clerk of the Council of Virginia, under Governor Andros. This office gave him access to documentary records, and in 1705, for reasons given in the first selection, he published in London a "History and Present State of Virginia," in four books. This was not merely an account of contemporary conditions, social and economic, though it furnishes us with intimate details of the daily life in Virginia during the first century of its settlement; it gave also an account of the settlement of the colony and of its history. The work attracted so much attention that two years after its first appearance a French translation of it with fourteen woodcuts appeared in Amsterdam, and these illustrations were used in a second English edition in 1722. The book was not again printed until 1855, but whether much read or not, Beverley deserves the distinction of being remembered as a farsighted, patriotic citizen, and a sensible, sprightly writer.] HOW HE CAME TO WRITE 15 HOW HE CAME TO WRITE [FROM THE PREFACE TO THE "HISTORY AND PRESENT STATE OF VIRGINIA." EDITION OF 1722.] My first business in the world being among the public records of my country, the active thoughts of my youth put me upon taking notes of the general administration of the government; but with no other design than the gratification of my own inquisitive mind; these lay by me for many years afterwards, obscure and secret, and would forever have done so, had not the following accident produced them. In the year 1703, my affairs calling me to England, I was soon after my arrival, complimented by my bookseller with an intimation, that there was prepared for printing a general account of all her Majesty's Plantations in America, and his desire that I would overlook it before it was put to the press; I agreed to overlook that part of it which related to Virginia. Soon after this he brings me about six sheets of paper written, which contained the account of Virginia and Carolina. This it seems was to have answered a part of Mr. Oldmixon's British Empire in America.1 I very innocently (when I began to read) placed pen and paper by me, and made my observations upon the first page, but found it in the sequel so very faulty, and an abridgement only of some accounts that had been printed 60 or 70 years ago; in which also he had chosen the most strange and untrue parts, and left out the most sincere and faithful, so that I laid aside all thoughts of farther observations, and gave it only a reading; and my bookseller for answer, that the account was too faulty and too imperfect to be mended. Withal telling him, that seeing I had in my junior days taken some notes of the government, which I then had with me in England, I would make him an account of my own country, if I could find time, while I staid in London. And this I should the rather undertake in justice to so fine a 1 John Oldmixon (1674-1742), a miscellaneous and notoriously partisan writer. The book referred to appeared in 1708. |