h the enemy, than to be sneakingly murdered in our
beds. If we lie still, we are destroyed by the heathen; if we defend
ourselves, we are accounted rebels and traitors. But we will fight. And
if we must be hanged for killing those that will destroy us, let them
hang us, we will venture that rather than lie at the mercy of our
barbarous enemies. So, turning their backs upon the plantations, they
struck out into the dense woods.[526]

When Berkeley heard that his authority was still defied, and his pardon
rejected, he was resolved at all hazards to compel obedience. Gathering
around him a party of three hundred gentlemen, "well armed and mounted",
he set out, on the third of May, to intercept the rebels.[527] But
learning, upon his arrival at the falls of the James, that Bacon had
crossed the river and was already far away, he decided to encamp in the
frontier counties and await his return.[528]

But he sent out a party under Colonel Claiborne to pursue the Pamunkeys,
and induce them, if possible, to return to their reservation. The
savages were found entrenched in a strong; position, "encompassed with
trees which they had fallen in the branch of an Impassable swamp".[529]
Their queen refused to abandon this retreat, declaring that since the
Governor had not been able to command the obedience of Bacon, he could
not save her people from his violence. But she promised that the
Pamunkeys should remain peaceable and should take no part in the raids
of the Susquehannocks. "Of this the Governor was informed, who resolved
not to be soe answered but to reduce her and the other Indians, soe
soone as Bacon could be brought to submit."[530]

On May the tenth Berkeley issued a new proclamation. The taking of arms
by Bacon, he said, against his wishes and commands, was an act of
disloyalty and rebellion. If permitted to go unpunished, it would tend
to the ruin and overthrow of all government in the colony. It was his
duty to use all the forces at his command to suppress so dangerous a
mutiny. Should the misguided people desert their leader, and return to
their allegiance, he would grant a free and full pardon. And as
Nathaniel Bacon had shown himself by his rash proceedings utterly
unworthy of public trust, he suspended him from the Council and from all
other offices held by him. It was amazing, he said, that after he had
been Governor of Virginia so many years, and had done always equal
justice to all men, the people should be sedu