But now the end was at hand for Bacon. While at the house of Major Thomas Pate, in Gloucester County, he became ill of dysentery. As he lay on his deathbed, he kept inquiring whether the redcoats had arrived, and whether there was a strong guard around the house. We do not know whether his wife was there to comfort him in his last hours, but it is probable that she was far away at Curles Neck. He died October 26, 1676. Knowing that Berkeley would want to expose the body on a gibbet, Lawrence is said to have disposed of it in secret, probably with a night service somewhere in the Virginia woods, and then to have had a public funeral with a casket weighted with stones.[51] Bacon was mourned in many a humble cottage throughout the colony. Who now would lead the people in their struggle to gain their rights? One of his followers wrote in touching verse that death had ended "our hopes of safety, liberty, our all."[52] There was no one else who had won the confidence and affection of the people to take his place. The struggle continued for three more months, the rebels won more victories, but something like anarchy ensued. There was no central government, some of the county courts were closed, crops were rotting in the fields, servants and slaves left their masters to join the rebel forces, there was indiscriminate plundering, the masters of the incoming merchant vessels refused to sell their goods to the rebels or buy what tobacco they had on hand. As soon as Berkeley got his hands on some of Bacon's followers, he began a series of executions unparalleled in American history. Thomas Hansford pleaded that he might be shot like a soldier, but Sir William told him he was condemned, not as a soldier, but as a rebel. As he stood on the scaffold he addressed the assembled crowd, declaring that he died a loyal subject and lover of his country.[53] When Major Cheeseman was brought before the Governor, his wife rushed in to plead that she be hanged and her husband spared. Berkeley spurned her with a vile insult. Cheeseman cheated the hangman by dying in prison.[54] But Captain Wilford, George Farloe, Thomas Young, and others soon followed Hansford to the gallows. The end came before the arrival of the English troops. Group after group surrendered, and their leaders took the oath of loyalty, kissed the Governor's hand, and were pardoned. But there was no pardon for Bacon's two chief advisers. "I so much hate Drummond and Lawrence that though they could put the country in peace into my hands, I would not accept it from such villains," Berkeley declared.[55]