to effect its capture.[692] The rebels "kep a negligent Gard", and were
caught completely by surprise. Hansford was taken prisoner, with twenty
of his men, and brought in triumph to Accomac.

Here he was at once charged with treason, tried by court martial, and
condemned to die. He pleaded passionately to "be shot like a soldier and
not to be hanged like a Dog. But it was tould him ... that he was not
condemned as he was merely a soldier, but as a Rebell, taken in
Arms."[693] To the last he refused to admit that he was guilty of
treason. To the crowd that gathered around the scaffold to witness his
execution he protested "that he dyed a loyal subject and a lover of his
country".

"This business being so well accomplish'd by those who had taken
Hansford, ... they had no sooner deliver'd there Fraight at Accomack,
but they hoyse up there sayles, and back againe to Yorke River, where
with a Marvellous celerity they surprise one Major Cheise-Man, and som
others, amongst whom one Capt. Wilford, who (it is saide) in the
bickering lost one of his eyes, which he seemed little concern'd at, as
knowing that when he came to Accomack, that though he had bin starke
blinde, yet the Governour would take care for to afford him a guide,
that should show him the way to the Gallows."[694]

The Governor was resolved to make the rebel leaders pay dearly for the
indignities they had put upon him. Those that were so luckless as to
fall into his hands, were hastened away to their execution with but the
mockery of a trial. Doubtless Berkeley felt himself justified in this
severity. To him rebellion against the King was not merely a crime, it
was a hideous sacrilege. Those guilty of such an enormity should receive
no mercy. But this cannot explain or excuse the coarse brutality and
savage joy with which he sent his victims to the scaffold. It is
impossible not to feel that many of these executions were dictated, not
by motives of policy or loyalty, but by vindictiveness.

Nothing can make this more evident that the pathetic story of Madam
Cheesman. "When ... the Major was brought in to the Governor's presence,
and by him demanded, what made him to ingage in Bacon's designes? Before
that the Major could frame an Answer ... his Wife steps in and tould his
honr: that it was her provocations that made her Husband joyne in the
Cause that Bacon contended for; ading, that if he had not bin influenced
by her instigations, he had never don that whic