grant letters patent, but they contained little more than the promise that the colony should be directly dependent on the Crown.

This whole affair caused universal resentment in the colony, and the expense of the negotiations in England made the people "desperately uneasy." Berkeley reported that "the two great taxes of sixty pounds per poll to buy in the Northern patent made those that thought they were not concerned in it ripe for mutiny." The agents, too, warned that the Arlington and Culpeper grant might cause the common people to rise in arms and perhaps bring about "the utter dispersion" of the planters.

With the staple crop of the colony a drug on the market because of the Navigation Acts, with tax piled on tax to buy back the liberties of the people from favorites of the King, with self-government made a mockery by the corrupting of the Burgesses, with the small farmers in rags, the people were ready to rise in arms at the least excuse. Before young Nathaniel Bacon set foot on Virginia soil Berkeley and his henchmen were trembling in their boots. The governor thought that if an opportunity offered itself the planters might go over to the Dutch "in hopes of bettering their condition by sharing the plunder of the country with them."

Into this mass of dynamite an Indian war threw a torch. The resulting explosion was Bacon's Rebellion.

In 1674 two mutinies had failed, it was said because the people, after assembling in arms, could not find a leader. Two years later, when again angry men gathered, they found their leader in Bacon. This young man was the son of Thomas Bacon, a wealthy English squire. At an early age he entered St. Catherine's Hall, Cambridge, as a fellow-commoner. There he seems to have idled away his time, and when he "broke into some extravagances" his father withdrew him. This apparent misfortune was turned to good effect when his father secured for him as tutor the great naturalist, John Ray. Ray found Nathaniel a lad of "very good parts and a quick wit," but "impatient of labor." When he was sixteen he accompanied Ray on a tour of Europe. On his return he re-entered Cambridge and later studied at Gray's Inn.

In 1670 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edward Duke. Her father had positively forbidden the match, and when she disobeyed him cut her off without one groat. But Thomas Bacon, and after Sir Edward's death, her brother John, made ample provision for the young couple. All would have been well had not Nathaniel been tricked by two sharpers in a deal with a guileless youth named Jason, and left with a long and tedious lawsuit.

It was at this juncture that he decided to seek his fortune in Virginia. There he might hope for quick advancement, because his cousin, also named Nathaniel Bacon, had attained a position of influence, and because he was related to Lady Berkeley, wife of the governor. Upon the advice of his grandmother, Lady Brooke, he left his wife behind until he had prepared a place for her "answerable to her quality." Upon his arrival in Virginia he was welcomed by Sir William, and it was at his advice "or at least friendly approbation" that he purchased a plantation at Curles Neck, on the James, forty miles above Jamestown, and a tract of land at the site of Richmond, on what was then the frontier. "When first I designed Virginia my chiefest aims were a further inquiry into those western parts in order to which I chose to seat myself so remote," he said, "I having always been delighted in solitude."

Bacon had been in Virginia but a few months when the governor appointed him to the Council of State. This seemed a great honor indeed for a young man of twenty-eight. But Berkeley explained: "Gentlemen of your quality come very rarely into this country, and therefore when they do come are used by me with all respect." Bacon was greatly surprised. "As to anything of public employment in the country, my tender age and manner of living, not free from follies and youthful excesses, forbad me to hope or expect any such thing.... This sudden change were enough to stagger a philosopher of more settled temper than I am."

But it was not possible for the dictatorial governor and the hotheaded youth to get along together. Berkeley was accustomed to having obedience in return for favors. Bacon was not the man to knuckle under. It was prophetic of what was to follow that the first difference grew out of relations with the allied Indians. When poor immigrants took up holdings on the frontier rather than become tenants to wealthy men in the east, they encroached on the reservations of those Indian tribes which were under the protection of the government. They even laid out farms within the very limits of their villages. When the Indians, driven by hunger, killed any of their cattle or hogs, the frontiersmen "beat and abused them."

Apparently it was a dispute with the Indians which caused the first temporary breach between Bacon and Berkeley. We do not know just what happened, but Bacon in a letter to the Governor speaks of his "unbecoming deportment in your Honor's presence," and said he was sorry for it. Sir William's reply makes it probable that Bacon had suffered some losses from neighboring Indians, and had retaliated. "This sudden business of the Indians," Berkeley said, had raised in him "high distemper." And he asked Bacon to consider that relations between the whites and the Indians was his responsibility, so that it was important that he be advised of all dealings with them. Should there be serious trouble he would be criticised both in England and Virginia.

Bacon must have resented Berkeley's monopoly of the fur trade. He tells us that a desire to have a share in this lucrative business had been one of his motives for settling on the frontier. But he made a virtue of necessity and, in partnership with his neighbor, William Byrd I, applied to the governor for a license. They would pay him 800 pounds of beaver fur for the first year and 600 pounds a year thereafter. This looked good to Sir William. "I am in no such plentiful condition that I should refuse a good offer," he replied, "and therefore am likely to accept your and my cousin Byrd's offer."

With the opening months of 1676 there were ominous rumblings of revolt. From New England came word that the English there were engaged in a deadly war with the Indians, which Berkeley thought was not merely a local affair, "but a general combination of all from New England thither." The so-called allied tribes on the Virginia frontiers were sullen and resentful. "They also would be rid of us if they could," said Berkeley. Their efforts to wipe out the English in previous wars had failed only because their bows and arrows were no match for the muskets of the English. Now that they had firearms might not their efforts be more successful?

It was the Marylanders who had given firearms to the Susquehannocks, a fierce tribe living on their northern border. This they did so that they could protect them from the Senecas, one of the tribes of the Iroquois confederation. But in 1674, when the Marylanders made a separate treaty with the Senecas, the latter fell on the Susquehannocks, defeated them in battle, and swept them out of their fortified villages. Fleeing through Maryland the remnant of the tribe established themselves on the north bank of the Potomac directly across from the site of Mount Vernon.

Here they were safe from their enemies, but not from hunger. They might catch fish from the river, but they lacked space for corn fields, and the plantations of the English spread out over what had once been hunting grounds. It was inevitable that they would seek food where they could find it, and having robbed nearby farms they could not resist the temptation to commit a few murders. Associated with them were the remnants of the Doegs who had been driven