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 understanding of a woman's heart. Cheeseman was not hanged, however; but he died in prison, and the circumstances were thought mysterious, so that Berkeley was not held guiltless of the death. In the narrated incidents we can find a point of contrast between the female cultures of the North and the South. We can well imagine a Puritan wife addressing a dignitary as Mrs. Cheeseman addressed Governor Berkeley; but it is impossible to fancy Puritan women in the situation in which those "white gardes of the Divell" found themselves. The former would never have submitted to the degradation; they would not, for their lives, have so hampered the hands of their husbands. It was not the pioneer woman of a new continent who stood upon those ramparts and made their own breasts the shields of their enemies, but the delicately reared and nurtured woman of a pampered class. Yet that there was good courage among these fine ladies is shown, if showing were necessary, in the example of Mrs. Cheeseman; but it was not universal as among the women of the Puritans, though both its presence and absence formed but a general rule to which there were many and important exceptions.