United States or Bulgaria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In that river, on the 7th of September, 1676, there appeared this fleet of the King's Governor, set on retaking Virginia. Jamestown had notice. The Bacon faction held the place with perhaps eight hundred men, Colonel Hansford at their head.
It should "harbor no more rogues." What Bacon, Lawrence, Drummond, Hansford, and others really hoped whether they forecasted a republican Virginia finally at peace and prosperous whether they saw in a vision a new capital, perhaps at Middle Plantation, perhaps at the Falls of the Far West, a capital that should be without old, tyrannic memories cannot now be said.
He soon learned that he had a worse enemy than the Indians to fight at home. Some of his leading supporters in Jamestown, Lawrence, Drummond, Hansford, and others, came hastily to his camp, saying that they had been obliged to flee for safety, as Sir William was back again, with eighteen ships in the river and eight hundred men he had gathered in the eastern counties.
The discovery of those papers, and the extreme probability that Hansford, the partner of the English firm of Davis, Pierce, & Hansford, is surviving, and can be found, makes the probabilities strongly against you. My advice to you, is, that you make a merit of necessity; that you endeavor to effect a compromise before the affair has gone too far.
Summoned by Berkeley to surrender, Hansford refused, but that same night, by advice of Lawrence and Drummond, evacuated the place, drawing his force off toward the York. The next day, emptied of all but a few citizens, Jamestown received the old Governor and his army. The tidings found Bacon on the upper York.
Colonel Hansford, the most daring young officer in Bacon's whole army, was captured at the home of his sweetheart, and Berkeley, to whom he was taken, decreed that he should be hung. "Thomas Hansford," cried Berkeley, "I will quickly repay you for your part in this rebellion!" Colonel Hansford answered, "I ask no favor but that I may be shot like a soldier and not hanged like a dog."
Elizabeth Hansford of York County, who, at the death of her husband, faced the task of managing a plantation, seeing to cultivation of the land, disposing of his maritime interests, and at the same time, seeing to the interests of seven children.
He found it difficult nowadays to deny Boyd anything, let alone such a harmless request. "The first lieutenant comin' along will call me for sportin' a general's feathers on a sergeant's head," he protested. "Nothin' from Cousin Merry yet? Maybe Hansford didn't make it through with my letter. He hasn't come back yet.... But " "Think I'd lie to you about that?"
He had been the heart and soul of the rebellion, and with his death it collapsed swiftly and completely. Bacon was now beyond the Governor's wrath, but he wreaked his vengeance on those who had followed him. For long months the rebels were hunted and hounded, and when caught they were hanged without mercy. The first to suffer was Colonel Thomas Hansford.
Although existing records do not convey information, as to the part music played in the life of the Virginia planter of the seventeenth century, they do provide clues that music was enjoyed, and that a number of instruments were in the colony. Josias Modé, host at the French Ordinary in York County, whose widow, before 1679, married Charles Hansford, of York, owned two violins.
Word Of The Day