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+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+
THOMAS J. WERTENBAKER Edwards Professor of American History, Emeritus Princeton University
Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration Corporation Williamsburg, Virginia 1957
Copyright©, 1957 by Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration Corporation, Williamsburg, Virginia
Second Printing, 1959 Third Printing, 1964
Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet, Number 8
[Illustration: From Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson, Torchbearer of the Revolution Map of Virginia at the time of Bacon's Rebellion]
The months just preceding the year 1676 were marked in Virginia by ominous signs of disaster. A great comet streamed through the sky "like a horsetail," and it was well known that that meant pestilence or war. Then came tens of thousands of pigeons, stretching across the sky as far as the eye could see. They were followed by vast swarms of what seem to have been cicadas, which rose out of the ground, ate the fresh leaves of the trees, and then disappeared. So those who believed in omens were not surprised when the year was marked by the greatest catastrophe in the history of the colony.
But to understand what happened it is necessary to go back thirty-five years to the appointment by Charles I of Sir William Berkeley as Governor of Virginia. No doubt the King considered this an especial act of grace to the colony, for Berkeley was a member of the Privy Chamber, and as such lived in the royal palace. It was this, perhaps, which fired him with an intense loyalty for the House of Stuart which endured to the day of his death. To dispute the omnipotence of the king was in his eyes the darkest of crimes. A Master of Arts at Oxford, a writer of some merit, polished in manner, he seemed out of place in the forests of Virginia. Perhaps it was his passion to rule which brought him to the colony, perhaps it was cupidity, for he accumulated there a fortune of considerable size.