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CHAPTER
XV.

The first news of these disturbances arriving in England, cut short the promised charter just as it was 1676. ready to pass the seals. Instead of that charter, very Oct. 10. liberally drawn, a short patent was substituted, relating

chiefly to the judicial powers of the council, and the security of land titles, but without any mention of the Assembly, which was thus left to depend for its existence on the royal instructions. A royal proclamation of the same date authorized the governor to offer pardon to all who should repent and return to their obedience, Bacon only excepted. Letters were presently directed to Lord Baltimore and the Duke of York to seize Bacon, should he retire to their provinces, and send him back prisoner to Virginia.

As soon as the means could be mustered-for the king's exchequer was always low-three commissioners, Sir Herbert Jeffreys, appointed lieutenant governor of the colony, Francis Moryson, late one of the colonial agents, and Sir John Berry, were dispatched to Virginia, and with them a regiment of regular soldiers under Berry's command. They carried out a royal proclamation, offering pardon to all, Bacon only excepted, who should submit within twenty days after its publication; also instructions to the governor to declare all laws of the late Assembly void, and to call a new one, for members of which only freeholders were to be allowed to vote. The Assembly henceforth was to meet only once in two years, and, unless for special cause, was not to remain in session more than a fortnight; the wages of the members to be so reduced as not to be a burden to the country. These latter provisions were intended by the king in redress of grievances complained of by the tax-payers.

"God Almighty hath been inexpressibly merciful to

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this poor province !" so wrote Berkeley to his lieutenant CHAPTER Beverley, giving an account of Drummond's arrest and execution. But the hard-hearted old governor was him- 1677. self implacable. His house in Jamestown had been Jan. 21. burned; his plantation at Green Spring plundered. His pride had been touched by resistance to his authority, and his avarice by the loss of his property.

The com

missioners, on their arrival, found the governor by no Jan. 29. means satisfied with the seventeen condemnations and fourteen executions already had by martial law. Of those condemned, one had died before execution, and two had escaped. Instead of publishing the king's proclamation of pardon, the governor issued one of his own, Feb. 10. containing many exceptions besides Bacon.

Trials before the governor and council by "juries of life and death" were now substituted for courts martial, but the prisoners gained very little by the change. Bland was one of the first victims. He pleaded the king's pardon in the governor's pocket, but without avail. "It so happened," say the commissioners, "that none did escape being found guilty, condemned, and hanged, that did put themselves on trial." "We also observed some of the royal party that sat on the bench with us to be so forward in impeaching, accusing, and reviling the prisoners at the bar with that inveteracy as if they had been the worst of witnesses rather than justices of the commission, both accusing and condemning at the same time. This severe way of proceeding being represented to the Assembly, they voted an address to the governor that he would desist from any further sanguinary punishments, for none could tell when or where it would terminate. So the governor was prevailed on to hold his hand, after hanging twenty-three, eight of which we sat at the trial and condemnation of, and ad

CHAPTER Vised that they should be executed in their own counXV. ties, under small guards, to try the temper of the people, 1677. which proved all peaceable." The executions, it is said, exceeded the number of all slain on both sides during the war.

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Though executions were suspended, trials still went A great many, without trial at all, were subjected to heavy fines, payable sometimes in tobacco, and sometimes in pork, for the use of his majesty's soldiers. Some had their whole estates taken from them. ers were banished, their property being forfeited except enough to pay their passage out of the country. Others were sentenced to ask pardon on their knees, and to beg their lives with a rope about their necks. In some cases, through connivance of the magistrates, a "small tape,” or "Manchester binding," appears to have been used; but this lenity was denounced by the council as a high contempt of their authority. Some of the fines were laid to the governor's use. Such was the certainty of conviction, "there was not a man but would much rather acquiesce to have any fine laid upon him before he would venture to stand his trial." "So that at last," say the commissioners, "this was the question to criminals Will you stand your trial, or be fined and sentenced as the court shall think fit?"

The commissioners complained of these arbitrary fines as in conflict with the king's proclamation, which pardoned all or nothing, and as "a most apparent contradiction to the laws of England," which forbade the seizing of any man's estate without lawful trial. They called the attention of the governor to an opinion of "the learned Lord Coke" positively against any such proceedings; but he gave little heed to it, appealing to the king, the Privy Council, and the learned judges of the

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law. The commissioners then insisted that the forfeit- CHAPTER ed estates should be appraised and inventoried, and bonds taken from the parties in possession, none to be 1677. dispossessed till his majesty's pleasure should be known. The first precedent of this sort had indeed been established by Berkeley himself, in granting the petition of the widow Bacon, to enjoy, under these conditions, the estate of her late husband.

Toward the widow of Drummond Berkeley was much less gracious. Drummond's small plantation was seized to the governor's own use, and the widow driven from it, with her five small children, to wander and starve in the woods. But Sarah Drummond knew how to defend herself.

She petitioned the king in council to be put on the same footing with the other widows; and presently, after Berkeley's death, she brought a suit against the Lady Berkeley, to recover the value of a crop she had appropriated; and in both cases successfully.

The women, indeed, seem to have taken an active part in this affair. The wife of Cheaseman has been already mentioned. Sarah Grindon, "the wife and late. attorney of Thomas Grindon," was specially excepted as "a great encourager and assister in the late horrid rebellion," out of an act of indemnity and free pardon presently passed.

This indemnity and pardon were, however, very limited. All those already executed or banished, together with several others who had escaped, were specially excepted from it, as were twenty-four other persons by name, except as to the punishment of death; several of whom were disposed of in a separate act of pains and penalties. Nor was this pardon to extend to servants, or to such as had plundered any Loyalists, or destroyed their cattle or burned their houses. Even to this slight con

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CHAPTER cession the governor would not consent without an act of attainder, including all whom he had executed by 1677. martial law, and such as had escaped by death or flight. By another act, all who had held any command during the rebellion, or had been eminent in aiding, assisting, or encouraging it, except such as by a timely return to duty assisted in its suppression, were disqualified to hold any office, civil or military, except the offices of constable and surveyor of highways a disqualification specially extended to Ingram, Walklett, and all who were in arms when West Point surrendered. To presume to speak, write, or publish any thing tending to rebellion, or in favor of the late rebels, exposed to heavy fines and standing in the pillory; the third offense to be punished as treason. If the culprit were a married woman, and no one volunteered to pay her fine, she was "to be whipped on the bare back with twenty lashes for the first offense," and thirty for the second. Similar penalties were imposed for speaking disrespectfully of any in authority. Yet necessary reforms were not wholly omitted. It was provided by the same act, that any justice of the peace so drunk on court days as to be adjudged by his fellows incapable of performing his duties, should be fined, and for the third offense should lose his commission. Ministers "notoriously scandalous by drunkenness, swearing, fornication, or other heinous and crying sins," were to forfeit for the first and second offenses half a year's salary, and for the third offense their cures. Several laws of the late Assembly for the correction of official abuses were re-enacted almost in terms. The act against tippling houses was somewhat relaxed; but all ordinaries must be licensed, the rate of charges was fixed, and only two were to be allowed in each county. Of those active in the late commotions, Bacon, Ingram,

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