winter, overcome by cold and hunger. On the 20th of January, the Fate of the day after his capture, he was brought before Berkeley at leaders. Bacon's house, the former station of one of the smaller bands of insurgents. The old Governor's triumph had come. This man and Lawrence were regarded by him as his bitterest enemies, and he hated them with a positive ferocity. He greeted the prisoner with a low bow. "Mr. Drummond," he said, "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." Drummond answered with courage and dignity, "What your honor pleases ;" and when, three hours later, his sentence was carried out at Middle Plantation, he met death bravely. He was, says one of the narratives, a sober Scotch gentleman of good repute, and he left a name which few even of his enemies treated with disrespect, except in the one matter of his political action. Punishments Berkeley. Berkeley used the power that victory gave him without mercy. For a time there was in Virginia an actual reign of terror, inflicted by and no man knew when he might be seized, condemned, and executed. Drummond's little plantation was seized, and his wife and five children were driven from it "to wander in the woods and desarts till they were ready to starve." It was proposed to expose the bones of Bacon hung in chains upon a gibbet; but his body had been so carefully concealed that all attempts to find it proved useless. Punishments of all kinds-fine, confiscation, imprisonment, banishment, and many ingenious minor penalties were inflicted right and left, until even the Governor's friends expostulated. Their counsel would perhaps have been in vain, had not a sudden check of a more powerful sort been put upon the angry knight's revenge. At the end of January, 1677, the tardy assistance sent from England, in reply to Berkeley's petition of many months before, commission- arrived in the James River. But it did not come precisely England. in the form which the Governor's party wished. In the small fleet that anchored below the ruins of the capital was Colonel Herbert Jeffreys, armed with a commission to succeed Sir William in his office, while he, as well as Sir John Berry, the admiral, and Colonel Morrison, who had been Berkeley's substitute for awhile in 1661, brought appointments as commissioners to investigate the causes of the rebellion, and to attend to the settlement of affairs after its suppression. Berkeley was, it is true, to aid them in this work; but in reality his own conduct was under examination, and he found himself at once in the attitude of a defendant. The instructions of the commissioners authorized them to grant amnesty to those who should submit and give bonds for future good behavior, excepting Bacon, Arrival of ers from 1677.] THE ROYAL COMMISSIONERS. 317 whose death was not known, of course, when the fleet left England; but still, a discretionary power to punish other leaders and those especially obnoxious was left in their hands. The English officials put a speedy end to the system of drum-head courts-martial, by which the Governor had brought so many The punish checked. of his enemies to execution. From the time of their arrival ments (soon after which an Assembly met at Greenspring) the trials of Baconite prisoners were conducted with due form and caution elty ceased with the Commissioners' interference. Local courts winked at the means-sometimes ludicrously ingenious - by which the spirit of ignominious punishments was generally evaded, even when the letter was carried out. John Bagwell and Thomas Gordon wore "small tape," and William Potts "Manchester binding," instead of the halters with which they were ordered to appear in public. Some fifty persons were excepted from the amnesty, including those already executed or banished, and acts of attainder were passed against twenty; but it does not appear certain that all the measures decided 1 The Com report. upon were at all rigidly carried out. In their report, Jeffreys, Morrison, and Berry spoke in the severest terms of Berkeley's missioners' course in trying men by martial law after peace had been reëstablished; and their investigation of the charges which the people made against him seems to have been made with a positive leaning toward the side of his accusers. Gradually the country became quieter. Protected by the presence of the Commissioners, the Assembly took a more independent tone, and the Virginians, encouraged for a moment to believe that they had gained something of that redress for which they had hoped, gradually settled back into the quiet life of their plantations. Bacon's rebellion had cost the colony a hundred thousand pounds, the loss of many lives, and months of anarchy; but it had shown the people their own power, and had developed an independence that was to bear fruit long after. When, in October, 1677, the royal Commissioners seized the Assembly's journals for investigation, and that body indignantly protested that "such a power had never been exercised by the King of England, and could not be authorized even by the great seal," they virtually asserted the principle of colonial legislative rights for which their descendants fought a hundred years later. Results of the rebellion. Berkeley returns to When the fleet of the Commissioners returned to England in April, Berkeley went with it, leaving Jeffreys Governor. The old cavalier was ill and broken in spirit. The bitter outbreak of his reveng› was possibly, as it was urged on his behalf, a result of the "peevishness" and irritability of age. He had one longing left, — to justify his conduct in the eyes of the King, whose approval would have consoled him for all else. But he seems to have been altogether disappointed. Opinion both in Parliament and at court he found to be bitterly against him. It is said by one writer that he was received by Charles with kindness; but it was generally believed that he was treated with entire neglect, and did not see the King at all, sinking rapidly from the time of his arrival, until, in a few weeks, he died broken-hearted and disgraced. There came back to Virginia one who had been his servant on his voyage and till his death, "from whom a report was whispered about, that the King did say, that old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than he had done for the murther of his father.'" This speech, says the gossiping writer who records it, coming to the old Governor's ears, hastened his death: So that "he dyed soor after without having seen his Majesty; which shuts up this tragedy. His illness and death. - 6 CHAPTER XIV. NEW YORK. QUIET BEGINNING OF THE ENGLISH RULE. THE ADMINISTRATION OF NICOLLS.THE NEW JERSEY GRANT. - ARRIVAL OF CARTERET.- SETTLEMENT OF NEWARK AND ELIZABETH. THE CONNECTICUT BOUNDARY. - THE NAMES AND DIVISIONS OF THE PROVINCE. THE "DUKE'S LAWS."- ENGLISH OFFICIALS. THE WAR BETWEEN ENGLAND AND THE NETHERLANDS. - DISCONTENT IN LONG ISLAND. NEW YORK AND CANADA. -THE FRENCH AND THE MOHAWKS. THE PEACE OF BREDA. ADMINISTRATION OF LOVELACE. - PROGRESS OF THE PROVINCE. - THE TOWN OF NEW YORK. - RENEWED WAR IN EUROPE. - THE RE-CONQUEST OF TEW NETHERLAND.- COLVE'S ADMINISTRATION. -NEW NETHERLAND CEDED TO ENGLAND BY THE PEACE OF WESTMINSTER. View in the Kills. THE people of New Amsterdam learned, almost as soon as the garrison of the fort had disappeared down Beaver Street, and the English flag was recognized as flying from its flagstaff, that the change which had taken place was not, to their dull sensitiveness, a very essential one. Stuyvesant, no doubt, when Quiet beginhe had seen his troop safely embarked for Holland, stumped ning of the back into the town in profound depression. But depres- rule. sion may have turned to rage as he met the cheerful burghers who had insisted on his surrender, and who could congratulate themselves, English and almost reproach him, upon the faithfulness with which the English were observing its terms. There was no plundering, no disorder; the Connecticut men, whom the Dutch had the most reason to fear, were kept on the other side of the river; private property was everywhere respected; the property of the Company was protected from molestation; the course of trade was no more interrupted than in any other brief interval of unusual excitement; and the ordinary affairs of life returned almost immediately to their usual channel. Nicolls wisely acted as if he were receiving a repentant province that had for a season forgotten its true allegiance, rather than as taking possession of one he had conquered. Perhaps the Dutch made no very nice distinctions; but they could remember some heavy grievances under the rule of the Company; this new power promised, at least, that things should be no worse, and it was clearly meant that the promise should be kept. Organiza olls's Gov ernment. A provincial government of Englishmen was presently organized, but it was chiefly of those who had not before had to do tion of Nic- with New Netherland affairs, and had no prejudices. Captain Matthias Nicolls was made secretary; Captains Needham and Delavall, of England, and Thomas Topping and William Wells, of Long Island, were counsellors, two of the former Dutch officers also being sometimes called into consultation. But, as the articles of surrender provided, the municipal government was unchanged; and the municipal court met and transacted current business on the very day after English occupation. At Fort Orange The oath of now Albany - and at Esopus the same general course was pursued ; at Rensselaerswyck Jeremias van Rensselaer was only compelled to renew his patent under the Duke of York, his people taking the oath of allegiance to England. This oath was also required of the Dutch in New York; and although it excited some opposition at allegiance. first because it was not prescribed in the articles of capitulation, it was taken in October by all the leading Dutch inhabitants. Even Stuyvesant and his immediate followers consented to this when satisfied that it did not affect the terms of capitulation. Nor was this frank acceptance of a new allegiance the only evidence of the general content; the city magistrates sent an address to the Duke of York avowing their warm approval of the new Governor, and of their hopes of prosperity under his rule. Grants to No sooner was the province fairly in English hands than new names were given to different portions, its boundaries were as far as Englishmen. possible defined, and grants of land were made to Englishmen. That region lying between the Hudson and the Delaware was named Albania, and grants and purchases were made within its boun |