Note 43 — Chapter XI · BACON’S REBELLION.

For the picturesque details of this narrative I have followed the well-known document found by Rufus King when minister to Great Britain in 1803, and published by President Jefferson in the Richmond Enquirer in 1804; since reprinted in Force’s Tracts, vol. i., Washington, 1836, and in Maxwell’s Virginia Historical Register, vol. iii., Richmond, 1850. The original manuscript was written in 1705, and addressed to Robert Harley, Queen Anne’s secretary of state, afterward Earl of Oxford. The writer signs himself “T. M.,” and speaks of himself as dwelling in Northumberland County and possessing a plantation also in Stafford County, which he represented in the House of Burgesses. From these indications it is pretty certain that he was Thomas Mathews, son of Governor Samuel Mathews heretofore mentioned. His account of the scenes of which he was an eye-witness is quite vivid.