The Council, in a long statement, written when the uprising was but a few weeks old, declared that Bacon's "only aim has always been and is nothing else but of total subversion of the government." Thomas Ludwell and Robert Smith, who at the time were in England, on receiving reports of the rebellion, said that when the Indian raids began "some idle and poor people made use of the present conjunction for their ill designs." William Sherwood, an eyewitness of what took place, testified that "it is most true that the great oppressions and abuses of the people by the governor's arbitrary will hath been the cause of the late troubles there." Colonel Jeffreys, who was commissioned by the King to investigate the causes of the uprising, put the blame, not on the Indian war, but upon Philip Ludwell and Robert Beverley, who "were the great advisors of Berkeley, and as it may be proved were the chief causes of the miseries that befell the country in the rebellion."
Governor Notley, of Maryland, stated that "whatever palliations the great men of Virginia may use at the Council board in England ... yet you may be sure ... much ... if not every tittle of the accusations against them is truth." If the new governor, Colonel Herbert Jeffreys should "build his proceedings upon the old foundation, 'tis neither him nor all his Majesty's soldiers in Virginia will either satisfy or rule those people. They have been strangely dealt with by their former magistracy." Just two days later Nicholas Spencer wrote that though the rebellion was over, "the putrid humors of our unruly inhabitants are not so allayed but that they do frequently vent themselves ... and were they not awed by the overruling hand of his Majesty would soon express themselves by violent acts."
As for Bacon, he had been in command of the frontier forces but a few days when he sent messengers to every part of the colony to blast Berkeley's misgovernment. The Council reported to the Board of Trade that he had traduced the governor "with many false and scandalous charges." Later, in manifesto after manifesto, Bacon assailed the corruption, the inefficiency, and the injustices of Berkeley's regime. "We appeal to the country itself what and of what nature their oppressions have been, and by what cabals ... carried on." By taking on himself "the sole nominating" of civil and military officers he had made himself master of the colony. He had permitted his favorites "to lay and impose what levies and impositions upon us they should or did please, which they for the most part converted to their own private lucre and gain." As for seeking relief by petitioning the Burgesses, he said: "Consider what hope there is of redress in appealing to the very persons our complaints do accuse."