st that ruler.
He calls him in short "an old, treacherous villain." Lawrence and
his wife, not being rich, kept a tavern at Jamestown, and there Bacon
lodged, probably having been thrown with Lawrence before this. Persons
are found who hold that Lawrence was the brain, Bacon the arm, of the
discontent in Virginia. There was also Mr. William Drummond, who will be
met with in the account of Carolina. He was a "sober Scotch gentleman of
good repute"--but no more than Lawrence on good terms with the Governor
of Virginia.

On a morning in June, when the Assembly met, it was observed that
Nathaniel Bacon was not in his place in the Council--nor was he to be
found in the building, nor even in Jamestown itself, though Berkeley had
Lawrence's inn searched for him. He had left the town--gone up the river
in his sloop to his plantation at Curles Neck "to visit his wife, who,
as she informed him, was indisposed." In truth it appears that Bacon
had gone for the purpose of gathering together some six hundred up-river
men. Or perhaps they themselves had come together and, needing a leader,
had turned naturally to the man who was under the frown of an unpopular
Governor and all the Governor's supporters in Virginia. At any rate
Bacon was presently seen at the head of no inconsiderable army for
a colony of less than fifty thousand souls. Those with him were only
up-river men; but he must have known that he could gather besides from
every part of the country. Given some initial success, he might even set
all Virginia ablaze. Down the river he marched, he and his six hundred,
and in the summer heat entered Jamestown and drew up before the Capitol.
The space in front of this building was packed with the Jamestown folk
and with the six hundred. Bacon, a guard behind him, advanced to the
central door, to find William Berkeley standing there shaking with rage.
The old royalist has courage. He tears open his silken vest and fine
shirt and faces the young man who, though trained in the law of the
realm, is now filling that law with a hundred wounds. He raises a
passionate voice. "Here! Shoot me! 'Fore God, a fair mark--a fair mark!
Shoot!"

Bacon will not shoot him, but will have that promised commission to go
against the Indians. Those behind him lift and shake their guns. "We
will have it! We will have it!" Governor and Council retire to consider
the demand. If Berkeley is passionate and at times violent, so is
Bacon in his own way, for an