enemies scoffed, Bacon's followers mourned. One of them
expressed their sorrow and despair in excellent verse:

"Death why so cruel! What, no other way
To manifest thy spleene, but thus to slay
Our hopes of safety, liberty, our all
Which, through thy tyranny, with him must fall
To its late chaos? Had thy rigid force
Been dealt by retail, and not thus in gross,
Grief had been silent: Now we must complain
Since thou, in him, hast more than thousand slain...."

What, we may ask, should be Bacon's place in history? Is he to be
looked upon only as a rash young man, whose ambition and insistence on
having his own way brought disaster to the colony and death to many
brave men? Or should he be regarded as a martyr to the cause of
liberty? That Bacon was precipitate, that his judgement was faulty at
times there can be no doubt. But that he fought to put an end to
Berkeley's "French despotism", to restore true representative
government in the colony, to break the power of the group of parasites
who surrounded the governor, to end unjust and excessive taxes, to
make local government more democratic, is obvious. He said so
repeatedly. When Bacon and his men said they had enough English blood
in their veins not to be murdered in their beds by the Indians, they
might have added that they had enough English blood not to remain
passive while a despotic old governor robbed them of their liberty.
When Bacon's enemies tried to cast opprobrium upon him by calling him
the Oliver Cromwell of Virginia, they did not realize that future
generations would consider this an unintentional tribute. Certainly he
must have been a man of great magnetism, power of persuasion, and
sincerity, a man who had a cause to plead, who could arouse the
devotion of so many thousands. But it was true, as one sorrowing
follower wrote, that

"none shall dare his obsequies to sing
In deserv'd measures, until time shall bring
Truth crown'd with freedom, and from danger free,
To sound his praises to posterity."

[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM BERKELEY
From the Original Portrait by an Unknown Artist, now in the
possession of Maurice du Pont Lee, Greenwich. Connecticut.
Canvas measures 49-1/2 x 40-1/2 inches.
From Alexander W. Weddell, Virginia Historical Portraiture.
Courtesy Virginia State Chamber of Commerce]

[Illustration: Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of
Commerce
Bacon's C