thought it strange that
the Divell's black garde should be enrouled God's soldiers," he says,
the husbands made it no less wonderful that their innocent and harmless
wives should thus be entred a white garde to the Divell. And this action
was a method in war that they were not well acquainted with that before
they could come to pierce their enemy's sides they must be obliged to
dart their weapons through their wives brest. "The Divell" of the
foregoing is of course Bacon himself; and really, when we think of the
poor ladies set in their "white aprons" on the breastworks, not sure
whether they have most to fear from front or rear, from friend or foe,
we are tempted to consider the title well bestowed. Yet Bacon was
generally held to be a man of gallantry as well as a gallant man; but
the incident is not to the point. At last "the guardian angells withdrew
into a place of safety," the works being finished; and, strange to say,
we hear no more concerning them, though they were left in the camp of
the rebels when Berkeley's troops were repulsed, and what befel them
during the subsequent triumph--a brief one--of the Baconian forces and
the burning of Jamestown we are not told. It is to be hoped that they
were restored to their homes with more courtesy than they were brought
thence.

Bacon's antagonist, Sir William Berkeley, did not prove himself more
gallant or considerate to women than the defeated rebel. After Bacon had
been defeated and had wisely died, the wife of Major Cheeseman, one of
the captured rebels, was present during the interrogation of her husband
by Berkeley, and when the latter demanded Cheeseman's reasons for
rebelling, the lady very courageously came forward and prevented his
reply by telling the enraged Sir William that "It was her provocation
that made her husband join in the cause that Bacon contended for; if he
had not been influenced by her instigations he had never done that which
he had done;" and then, kneeling to Berkeley, she continued, "Since what
her husband had done was by her means, and so by consequence she most
guilty, she prayed that she might be hanged and he pardoned." It was a
womanly and wifely speech; and those who are unacquainted with the
character of Berkeley will find it difficult to believe that he answered
her by a proposition so gross and insulting that it proved him utterly
wanting the true instincts, however he may have had the veneer, of a
gentleman, as well as in understan