This was not the worst. The colonial government had always been abused for the ends of worthless office-holders from England. Now it was farmed out more offensively than ever. In 1673 Charles II. donated Virginia to two of his favorites, Lords Arlington and Culpeper, to be its proprietaries like Penn in Pennsylvania and Baltimore in Maryland. They were to have all the quit rents and other revenues, the nomination of ministers for parishes, the right of appointing public officers, the right to own and sell all public or escheated lands; in a word, they now owned Virginia. This shabby treatment awoke the most intense rage in so proud a people. The king relented, revoked his donation, made out and was about to send a new charter. But it was too late; rebellion had already broken out. The Indians having made some attacks on the upper plantations, one Nathaniel Bacon, a spirited young gentleman of twenty-eight, recently from England, applied to Sir William Berkeley for a commission against them. The governor declined to give it, fearing, in the present excited condition of the colony, to have a body of armed men abroad. Bacon, enraged, extorts the commission by force. The result is civil war in the colony. The rebels are for a time completely victorious. Berkeley is driven to Accomac, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, but, succeeding in capturing a fleet sent to oppose him, he returns with this and captures Jamestown. Beaten by Bacon in a pitched battle, he again retires to Accomac, and the colony comes fully under the power of his antagonist, the colonists agreeing even to fight England should it interpose on the governor's side, when a decisive change in affairs is brought about by the rebel leader's death. [Illustration: Reverend Dr. Blair, First President of William and Mary College.] [1690] The rebellion was now easily subdued, but it had soured and hardened old Governor Berkeley's spirit. Twenty-three in all were executed for participation in the movement. Charles II. remarked: "That old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than I for the murder of my father." After Bacon's Rebellion the colonial annals show but a dull succession of royal governors, with few events specially interesting. Under the governorship of Lord Howard of Effingham, which began in 1684, great excitement prevailed in Virginia lest King James II. should subvert the English Church there and make Catholicism dominant, which indeed might possibly have occurred but for James's abdication in 1688.