d in the colony. Sir William Berkley and his people beheld the
flames of the conflagration from the vessels riding at anchor, about
twenty miles below.

Bacon now marched to York River, and crossed at Tindall's (Gloucester)
Point, in order to encounter Colonel Brent, who was marching against him
from the Potomac, with twelve hundred men. But the greater part of his
men, hearing of Bacon's success, deserting their colors declared for
him, "resolving with the Persians, to go and worship the rising
sun."[310:A] Bacon, making his headquarters at Colonel Warmer's, called
a convention in Gloucester, and administered the oath to the people of
that county, and began to plan another expedition against the Indians,
or, as some report, against Accomac, when he fell sick of a dysentery
brought on by exposure. Retiring to the house of a Dr. Pate, and,
lingering for some weeks, he died. Some of the loyalists afterwards
reported that he died of a loathsome disease, and by a visitation of
God; which is disproven by T. M.'s Account, by that published in the
Virginia Gazette, and by the Report of the King's Commissioners. Some of
Bacon's friends suspected that he was taken off by poison; but of this
there is no proof. In his last hours he requested the assistance of a
minister named Wading, whom he had arrested not long before for his
opposition to the taking of the oath in Gloucester, telling him that "it
was his place to preach in the church, and not in the camp."

The place of Bacon's interment has never been discovered, it having been
concealed by his friends, lest his remains should be insulted by the
vindictive Berkley, in whom old age appears not to have mitigated the
fury of the passions. According to one tradition, in order to screen
Bacon's body from indignity, stones were laid on his coffin by his
friend Lawrence, as was supposed; according to others, it was
conjectured that his body had been buried in the bosom of the majestic
York where the winds and the waves might still repeat his requiem:--

"While none shall dare his obsequies to sing
In deserved measures; until time shall bring
Truth crowned with freedom, and from danger free,
To sound his praises to posterity."[311:A]

Lord Chatham, in his letters addressed to his nephew, the Earl of
Camelford, advises him to read "Nathaniel Bacon's Historical and
Political Observations, which is, without exception, the best and most
instructive book we have