s--Bacon
chosen Leader--His Character--Solicits Commission from Berkley
--He proclaims the Insurgents Rebels--Pursues them--Planters
of Lower Country revolt--Forts dismantled--Rebellion not the
Result of Bacon's Pique or Ambition--He marches into the
Wilderness--Massacre of friendly Indians--Bacon returns--
Elected a Burgess--Arrested--Released on Parole--Assembly
meets--Bacon sues for Pardon--Restored to the Council--
Nathaniel Bacon, Sr.--Berkley issues secret Warrants for
arrest of the younger Bacon.

"ABOUT the year 1675," says an old writer, "appeared three prodigies in
that country, which, from the attending disasters, were looked upon as
ominous presages. The one was a large comet, every evening for a week or
more at southwest, thirty-five degrees high, streaming like a horse-tail
westward, until it reached (almost) the horizon, and setting toward the
northwest. Another was flights of wild pigeons, in breadth nigh a
quarter of the mid-hemisphere, and of their length was no visible end;
whose weights broke down the limbs of large trees whereon these rested
at nights, of which the fowlers shot abundance, and ate them; this sight
put the old planters under the more portentous apprehensions because the
like was seen (as they said) in the year 1644, when the Indians
committed the last massacre; but not after, until that present year,
1675. The third strange phenomenon was swarms of flies about an inch
long, and big as the top of a man's little finger, rising out of spigot
holes in the earth, which ate the new-sprouted leaves from the tops of
the trees, without other harm, and in a month left us."[283:A]

The author of this account, whose initials are T. M., says of himself,
that he lived in Northumberland County, on the lower part of the
Potomac, where he was a merchant; but he had a plantation, servants,
cattle, etc., in Stafford County, on the upper part of that river; and
that he was elected a burgess from Stafford in 1676, Colonel Mason being
his colleague. T. M., perhaps, was Thomas Matthews, son of Colonel
Samuel Matthews, some time governor. He owned lands acquired from the
Wicocomoco Indians in Northumberland, and it is probable that his son,
Thomas Matthews, came into possession of them.[284:A] He appears to have
lived at a place called Cherry Point, probably on the Potomac, in
1681.[284:B]

On a Sunday morning, in the summer of 1675, a herdsman, named Robert