people, a
Siegfried capable of slaying the dragon. Nor were Lawrence and Drummond
idle, nor others of their way of thinking. The Indian troubles might
soon be settled, but why not go further, marching against other
troubles, more subtle and long-continuing, and threatening all the
future?

In the midst of this speculation and promise of change, the Governor,
feeling the storm, dissolved the Assembly, proclaimed Bacon and his
adherents rebels and traitors, and made a desperate attempt to raise an
army for use against the new-fangledness of the time. This last he could
not do. Private interest led many planters to side with him, and there
was a fair amount of passionate conviction matching his own, that his
Majesty the King and the forces of law and order were being withstood,
and without just cause. But the mass of the people cried out to his
speeches, "Bacon! Bacon!" As the popular leader had been warned from
Jamestown by news of personal danger, so in his turn Berkeley seems to
have believed that his own liberty was threatened. With suddenness he
departed the place, boarded a sloop, and was "wafted over Chesapeake Bay
thirty miles to Accomac." The news of the Governor's flight, producing
both alarm in one party and enthusiasm in the other, tended to
precipitate the crisis. Though the Indian trouble might by now be called
adjusted, Bacon, far up the York, did not disband his men. He turned and
with them marched down country, not to Jamestown, but to a hamlet called
Middle Plantation, where later was to grow the town of Williamsburg.
Here he camped, and here took counsel with Lawrence and Drummond and
others, and here addressed, with a curious, lofty eloquence, the throng
that began to gather. Hence, too, he issued a "Declaration," recounting
the misdeeds of those lately in power, protesting against the terms
rebel and traitor as applied to himself and his followers, who are only
in arms to protect his Majesty's demesne and subjects, and calling on
those who are well disposed to reform to join him at Middle Plantation,
there to consider the state of the country which had been brought into a
bad way by "Sir William's doting and irregular actings."

Upon his proclamation many did come to Middle Plantation, great planters
and small, men just freed from indentured service, holders of no
land and little land and much land, men of all grades of weight and
consideration and all degrees of revolutionary will, from Drummond--wi