nemy who fell into his hands in
retaliation for Berkeley's executions, he released some without
bringing them to trial and pardoned others who had been condemned.

To see that his orders were carried out he now planned, probably on
the advice of Lawrence and Drummond, to appoint three committees, one
"for settling the south side of James River," another to accompany the
army "to inquire into the cause of all seizures," and the third to
manage the Indian war. To prevent raids by the enemy from the Eastern
Shore Bacon ordered the banks of the great rivers "to be guarded all
along, to observe their motion, and as they moved to follow them and
prevent them from landing or having any provisions sent on board
them."

But for the daring young commander the end was at hand. "Before he
could arrive at the perfection of his plans providence did that which
no other hand durst do." While at his headquarters in the house of
Major Thomas Pate, in Gloucester, a few miles east of West Point, he
became ill of dysentery. Bacon's enemies accused him of being an
atheist, but in his last hours he called in Mr. Wadding to prepare his
mind for death. "He died much dissatisfied in mind," we are told,
"inquiring ever and anon after the arrival of the frigates and
soldiers from England, and asking if the guards were strong about the
house." He died October 26, 1676.

Bacon's enemies made much of the fact that he was so infected with
lice that his shirts had to be burned, and because of it spoke of his
death as infamous. But the lice probably had nothing to do with it,
since typhus seems to have been almost unknown in early America. On
the other hand, dysentery was fairly common. Bacon's body has never
been found. Thomas Mathews tells us that Berkeley wished to hang it on
a gibbet, but on exhuming his casket he found in it nothing but
stones. It was supposed that the faithful Lawrence, probably in the
dark of night, had buried the body in some secret place.

Berkeley gloated over his arch enemy's death. "His usual oath which he
swore at least a thousand times a day was 'God damn my blood,'" he
wrote, "and God so infected his blood that it bred lice in an
incredible number, so that for twenty days he never washed his shirts
but burned them. To this God added the bloody flux, and an honest
minister wrote this epitaph on him:

'Bacon is dead, I am sorry at my heart
That lice and flux should take the hangman's part'."

But while his