ed on board of the vessels.
Bland's expedition appears to have been very badly managed, and the
drunkenness of his men probably rendered his party so easy a
prey.[306:A] The greater part of the prisoners screened themselves from
punishment by entering into the governor's service. When Laramore waited
on the governor, he clasped him in his arms, called him his deliverer,
and gave him a large share of his favor. In a few days the brave old
Carver was hanged on the Accomac shore. Sir William Berkley afterwards
described him as "a valiant man and stout seaman, miraculously delivered
into my hand." Sir Henry Chicheley, the chief of the council, who, with
several other gentlemen, was a prisoner in Bacon's hands, afterwards
exclaimed against this act of the governor as most rash and cruel, and
he expected, at the time, to be executed in the same manner by way of
retaliation. Bland was put in irons and badly treated, as it was
reported.

Captain Gardner, sailing from the James River, went to the governor's
relief with his own vessel, the Adam and Eve, and ten or twelve sloops,
which he had collected upon hearing of Bland's expedition. Sir William
Berkley, by this unexpected turn of affairs, raised from the abyss of
despair to the pinnacle of hope, resolved to push his success still
further. With Laramore's vessel and Gardner's, and sixteen or seventeen
sloops, and a motley band of six hundred, or, according to another
account, one thousand men in arms, "rogues and royalists," the governor
returned in triumph to Jamestown, September 7th, 1676, where, falling
on his knees, he returned thanks to God, and again proclaimed Bacon and
his adherents rebels and traitors. There were now in Jamestown nine
hundred Baconites, as they had come to be styled, under command of
Colonel Hansford, commissioned by Bacon. Berkley sent in a summons for
surrender of the town, with offer of pardon to all except Drummond and
Lawrence. Upon this, all of them retired to their homes except Hansford,
Lawrence, Drummond, and a few others, who made for the head of York
River, in quest of Bacon, who had returned to that quarter.

During these events Bacon was executing his designs against the Indians.
As soon as he had dispatched Bland to Accomac, he crossed the James
River at his own house, at Curles, and surprising the Appomattox
Indians, who lived on both sides of the river of that name, a little
below the falls, (now Petersburg,) he burnt their town, kill