BACON, NATHANIEL (c. 1647-1676), a Virginian colonial politician and soldier, was born at Friston Hall in Suffolk, England. He graduated at Cambridge when about 21 years of age, but had interrupted his studies in 1663 to join a party which made an extended trip through the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and France. He later studied at the Inns of Court in London. In 1674 he married Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Edward Duke, and sailed for Virginia late in the same year. There Bacon acquired several estates, one where Richmond now stands, and another where he made his home, on the James river, about 4om. above Jamestown. Having high social standing, ample financial means and a keen intelligence, he was soon appointed a member of the governor's council, in which he acquired the first-hand knowledge of Governor Berkeley's policy and character which induced him to undertake "Bacon's Rebellion." The report of the royal com mission sent to Virginia after the rebellion describes him as "indifferent tall but slender, black-haired, and of an ominous, pen sive, melancholy aspect ; of a pestilent and prevalent logical dis course tending to atheism in most companies, not given to much talk, or to make sudden replies ; of a most imperious and dan gerous hidden pride of heart, despising the wisest of his neigh bours for their ignorance and very ambitious and arrogant." This is manifestly the official portrait of an outlaw and is widely at variance with the report of his admirers, who represented him as of genial manners and, although himself an aristocrat, of demo cratic political convictions, which made him popular with all who disapproved of the absolutism of Governor Berkeley. It is in creasingly apparent that the part played by Bacon in the forma tion of an American national consciousness was a great one ; and the circumstances attending the rebellion make it evident that this part could be played only by a man of very distinctive personality. Bacon died during a campaign, probably of malaria, on Oct. I, 1676.
See Gordon McCabe, "The Family of Nathaniel Bacon, the 'Rebel,' ' " in Virginia Magazine of Hist. and Biog.