hat would have come of his movement had he lived it is impossible to
say, for in the hour of his triumph a more perilous foe than Sir William
Berkeley was near at hand. While directing his men in their work at the
Jamestown trenches a fever had attacked him, and this led to a dangerous
dysentery which carried him off after a few weeks' illness. His death
was a terrible blow to his followers, for the whole movement rested on
the courage and ability as a leader of this one man. They even feared
the vindictive Berkeley would attempt some outrage upon the remains of
the "rebel" leader, and they buried his body at night in a secret place.
Some traditions assert that he was dealt with as De Soto had been before
him, his body being sunk in the bosom of the majestic York River, where
it was left with the winds and the waves to chant its requiem.

Thus ended what Sir William Berkeley called the "Great Rebellion." Its
leader dead, there was none to take his place. In despair the men
returned to their homes. Many of them made their way to North Carolina,
in which new colony they were warmly welcomed. A few kept up a show of
resistance, but they were soon dispersed, and Berkeley came back in
triumph, his heart full of revengeful passion. He had sent to England
for troops, and the arrival of these gave him support in his cruel
designs.

All the leading friends of Bacon whom he could seize were mercilessly
put to death, some of them with coarse and aggravating insults. The wife
of Major Cheeseman, one of the prisoners, knelt at the governor's feet
and pitifully pleaded for her husband's life, but all she got in return
from the old brute was a vulgar insult. The major escaped the gallows
only by dying in prison.

One of the most important of the prisoners was William Drummond, a close
friend of Bacon. Berkeley hated him and greeted him with the most
stinging insult he could think of.

"Mr. Drummond," said he, with a bitter sneer, "you are very welcome; I
am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia. Mr. Drummond, you
shall be hanged in half an hour."

And he was. His property was also seized, but when the king heard of
this he ordered it to be restored to his widow.

"God has been inexpressibly merciful to this poor province," wrote
Berkeley, with sickening hypocrisy, after one of his hangings. Charles
II., the king, took a different view of the matter, saying: "That old
fool has hung more men in that naked province than I d