Figure 6. — ^Jeffreys' Regiment of Foot 

 (1676- 1 682). Reproduced with permis- 

 sion of The Company of Mihtary Col- 

 lectors & Historians, Military Uniforms 

 in America, 1961, pi. 199. 



by the corporation of The Go\crnor and Company 

 of Massachusetts Bay in New England. .So, although 

 it was in one sense responsible for limiting the charter's 

 scope, Bacon's Rebellion was also responsible for the 

 charter's final approval. 



Partly as a result of the confusion concerning the 

 facts of the difficult Virginia situation and the uncer- 

 tainty as to where atithority lay in the colony, the 

 English government decided to create a new com- 

 mi.ssion consisting of three men who were to deter- 

 mine what had caused the rebellion in the colony and 

 to aid in correcting any abuses fotmd. This move 

 resulted in further uncertainty concerning the rebel- 

 lion and the lines of authority in Virginia. Immedi- 

 ately on their arrival in Virginia the commissioners 

 began to question many of the legal procedures 

 that Berkeley had adopted. The commissioners 

 induced Berkeley to switch from courts martial to 

 civil trials for captured rebels. They also tried to 

 persuade him to grant the defeated rebels full pardon 



by publishing rather than suppressing a printed 

 proclamation in the King's name that had been 

 designed to induce active rebels to surrender. Fur- 

 thermore, the commissioners took up the defense of 

 rebels whose property had been confiscated l)y the 

 loyalist forces in the last stages of the war. 



Berkeley refused to accept the commissioners' inter- 

 pretation of his authority on grounds that appear to 

 this writer to be justifiable. Not only on the issues 

 mentioned above but also on numerous smaller mat- 

 ters involving the legal relationship of the \ictorious 

 loyalists to the defeated rebels, Berkeley and the 

 commissioners clashed. Finding the commissioners 

 adamant, Berkeley appealed to the King, to the Privy 

 Council, and to "the learned judges of the law." He 

 failed, however, to get support from these sources. 

 Attorney General Jones' opinion was evasive, and 

 Charles II was in no mood to let his father's course of 

 action in the English civil wars — to which precedent 

 Berkeley particularly appealed — serve as a justification 

 for the Virginia governor.'^ 



The result of these disagreements in matters of law- 

 was operational chaos. The Virginia Governor issued 

 his own proclamation of pardon jointly with the 

 King's printed proclamation even though Berkeley's 

 proclamation modified that of the monarch. Fla- 

 grant rebels went scot free. Plundered loyalists found 

 the courts closed to their pleas for justice. The As- 

 sembly's act allowing recovery of stolen property was 

 disregarded by a new Governor who complained that 

 \'irginia's representative body, "instead of making an 

 .Act of Oblivion, have made a Statute of Remem- 

 brance, to last and intayle trouble from one Genera- 

 tion to another. . . ." -" 



Effect on Legislative Branches 



The fact that Bacon's Rebellion occurred in the 

 same year that Parliament, contrary to custom, failed 

 to meet has at most only symbolic significance. 

 The management of colonial affairs was still entirely 

 in the King's hands. Parliament was, except in its 

 passage of occasional legislation such as the Navi- 



19 Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Governor and the Rebel: A 

 History of Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, Chapel Hill, 1957, pp. 

 107-113; also, op. cil. (footnote 12), "The Humble Petition of 

 Sarah Drummond," pp. 354-375. 



2" Herbert Jeffreys to Henry Coventry, May 4, 1677, Longleat, 

 vol. 78, foUo 44. 



146 



BULLETIN 225: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY -AND TECHNOLOGY 



