Once more the doughty governor was a fugitive, and Bacon was master of the situation. Jamestown, the original Virginia settlement, was in his hands. What should he do with it? He could not stay there, for he knew that Colonel Brent, with some twelve hundred men, was marching down on him from the Potomac. He did not care to leave it for Berkeley to return to. In this dilemma he concluded to burn it. To this none of his men made any objection. Two of them, indeed, Lawrence and Drummond, who had houses in the place, set fire to them with their own hands. And thus the famous old town of John Smith and the early settlers was burned to the ground. Old as it was, we are told that it contained only a church and sixteen or eighteen houses, and in some of these there were no families. To-day nothing but the ruined church tower remains. Bacon now marched north to York River to meet Colonel Brent and his men. But by the time he got there the men had dispersed. The news of the affair at Jamestown had reached them, and they concluded they did not want to fight. Bacon was now master of Virginia, with the power though not the name of governor. What would have come of his movement had he lived it is impossible to say, for in the hour of his triumph a more perilous foe than Sir William Berkeley was near at hand. While directing his men in their work at the Jamestown trenches a fever had attacked him, and this led to a dangerous dysentery which carried him off after a few weeks' illness. His death was a terrible blow to his followers, for the whole movement rested on the courage and ability as a leader of this one man. They even feared the vindictive Berkeley would attempt some outrage upon the remains of the "rebel" leader, and they buried his body at night in a secret place. Some traditions assert that he was dealt with as De Soto had been before him, his body being sunk in the bosom of the majestic York River, where it was left with the winds and the waves to chant its requiem. Thus ended what Sir William Berkeley called the "Great Rebellion." Its leader dead, there was none to take his place. In despair the men returned to their homes. Many of them made their way to North Carolina, in which new colony they were warmly welcomed. A few kept up a show of resistance, but they were soon dispersed, and Berkeley came back in triumph, his heart full of revengeful passion. He had sent to England for troops, and the arrival of these gave him support in his cruel designs. All the leading friends of Bacon whom he could seize were mercilessly put to death, some of them with coarse and aggravating insults. The wife of Major Cheeseman, one of the prisoners, knelt at the governor's feet and pitifully pleaded for her husband's life, but all she got in return from the old brute was a vulgar insult. The major escaped the gallows only by dying in prison.