Nathaniel Bacon (colonist)
| Nathaniel Bacon | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 2, 1647 Suffolk, Kingdom of England |
| Died | October 26, 1676 (aged 29) Virginia Colony, English America |
| Cause of death | Dysentery |
| Nationality | English |
| Known for | Bacon's Rebellion |
| Notable work | Declaration of the People of Virginia |
| Home town | England |
| Spouse(s) | Elizabeth Duke |
Nathaniel Bacon (January 2, 1647 – October 26, 1676) was a colonist of the Virginia Colony, famous as the instigator of Bacon's Rebellion of 1676, which collapsed when Bacon himself died from dysentery.
Bacon was born on January 2, 1647, in Friston Hall in Suffolk, England, to wealthy merchant parents Thomas Bacon and wife Elizabeth Brooke Bacon. Nathaniel was one of their many children and received an education at Cambridge University. He went on a grand tour of Europe under the tutelage of John Ray, as well as studying law at Gray's Inn. Nathaniel married Elizabeth Duke, the daughter of Sir Edward Duke, without permission. After accusations that Nathaniel cheated another young man of his inheritance, Thomas Bacon gave his son the considerable sum of £1,800 and the young man sailed into exile across the Atlantic.
Upon arriving in Virginia, Nathaniel Bacon bought two frontier plantations on the James River. Since his cousin was a prominent militia colonel and friend of governor William Berkeley, Bacon settled in Jamestown, the capital. Soon Bacon was himself appointed to the governor's council. Berkeley's wife, Frances Culpeper, may also have been Bacon's cousin by marriage.
Before the "Virginia Rebellion," as it was then called, began in earnest in 1674, some freeholders on the Virginia frontier demanded that Native Americans, including those in friendly tribes living on treaty-protected lands, be driven out or killed. They also protested corruption in the government of Governor Berkeley, which historian Stephen Saunders Webb called "incorrigibly corrupt, inhumanely oppressive, and inexcusably inefficient, especially in war." Following a raid by Indians in Stafford County, Virginia, that killed two white men associated with trader Mathews whom a later report found regularly "Cheated and abused" Indians, a group of Virginia militiamen raided settlements of the Doeg and Susquehannock tribes, including across the Potomac River in Maryland. Maryland Governor Calvert protested the incursion, and the Susquehannock retaliated. Maryland militia then joined Virginia forces, and attacked a fortified Susquehannock village. After five chiefs had accepted the Maryland leader's invitation to parley, they were slaughtered, an action that provoked later legislative investigations and reprimands. The Susquehannocks retaliated in force against plantations: killing 60 settlers in Maryland and another 36 in their first assault on Virginia soil. Then other tribes joined in, killing settlers, burning houses and fields and slaughtering livestock as far as the James and York Rivers.
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