Friday, September 14, 2018

Offsite Post: ‘He Who Restrained the Mystery of Lawlessness: Sir William Berkeley’

And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.--St Paul the Apostle, II Thessalonians 2:6-7, copied from https://www.esv.org/2+Thessalonians+2/

Robert Beverley, Jr., a leading man in colonial Virginia (whose death was in 1722), writes of his bewilderment at the uprising against Gov William Berkeley in 1676 known as Bacon’s Rebellion:

        92. The Occasion of this Rebellion is not easie to be discover'd: But 'tis certain there were many Things that concurr'd towards it. For it cannot be imagined, that upon the Instigation of Two or Three Traders only, who aim'd at a Monoply of the Indian Trade, as some pretend to say, the whole Country would have fallen into so much Distraction; in which People did not only hazard their Necks by Rebellion: But endeavour'd to ruine a Governour, whom they all entirely loved, and had unanimously chosen; a Gentleman who had devoted his whole Life and Estate to the Service of the Country; and against whom in Thirty Five Years Experience, there had never been one single Complaint. Neither can it be supposed, that upon so slight Grounds, they would make Choice of a Leader they hardly knew, to oppose a Gentleman, that had been so long, and so deservedly the Darling of the People. So that in all Probability there was something else in the Wind, without which the Body of the Country had never been engaged in that Insurrection.

        Four Things may be reckon'd to have been the main Ingredients towards this intestine Commotion, viz. First, The extream low Price of Tobacco, and the ill Usage of the Planters in the Exchange of Goods for it, which the Country, with all their earnest Endeavours, could not remedy. Secondly, The Splitting the Colony into Proprieties, contrary to the original Charters; and the extravagant Taxes they were forced to undergo, to relieve themselves from those Grants. Thirdly, The heavy Restraints and Burdens laid upon their Trade by Act of Parliament in England. Fourthly, The Disturbance given by the Indians. . . .

--The History and Present State of Virginia, https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/beverley/beverley.html, pgs. 65-6, © This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.

Though Mr Beverley offers his owns reasons for why Bacon’s Rebellion happened, a better place to look might be Manly Palmer Hall, an arch-Satanist of the 20th century and student of all kinds of occult knowledge.  He writes in America’s Assignment with Destiny about Nathaniel Bacon’s ties to Lord Bacon, whose plan it was to establish his secularizing, technocratic New Atlantis utopia in North America, and then expands on the significance of this and his uprising:

The Bacon family itself was well represented in Virginia, both by name and by blood.  . . . Both of the Nathaniels [one was a cousin of the rebel--W.G.] have been referred to by historians as Lord Bacon’s “kinsmen.”  . . . this supplies enough material to demonstrate the natural and available channels for the transference of Lord Bacon’s projects and remains to Virginia.

 . . . When Governor Berkeley refused to protect the colonists from the neighboring Indian tribes, young Bacon took the field in defiance of the governor’s pleasure.  A feud approaching revolution resulted, which ended by Nathaniel Bacon and his followers burning the Jamestown settlement.  The episode is referred to historically as Bacon’s Rebellion, and it has been said that the occurrence played an important part in the formation of the American national consciousness.  Bacon’s career as a rebel lasted about twenty weeks, and he is supposed to have died of poison or malaria, October 1, 1676, while campaigning.  The circumstances of his death are obscure, and his body was buried in an unmarked grave to prevent Governor Berkeley from ordering the corpse to be dug up and publicly hanged.  There is more to this story than has ever been told.

Bacon’s Rebellion took place exactly one hundred years before the colonies of America declared themselves to be a free and independent nation in 1776.  The causes of the Rebellion and the Revolution were similar, if not identical.  In 1676, Bacon, the rebel, said:  “But if there be (as sure there is) a just God to appeal to, if religion and justice be a sanctuary here, if to plead the cause of the oppressed, if sincerely to aim at his Majesty’s honour, and the public good without any reservation or by-interest, if to stand in the gap after so much blood of our dear brethren bought and sold, if after the loss of a great part of his Majesty’s colony deserted and dispeopled freely with our lives and estates to save the remainder, be reason--God Almighty judge and let guilty die.”

Although Bacon, the rebel, was certainly an impetuous young man, his cause was just and his sentiments precisely those of his “noble kinsman.”  Governor Berkeley represented the same entrenched tyranny against which the Universal Reformation had been fashioned and perfected.  In justice, however, it should be noted that Berkeley was summoned to England to explain his conduct.  The king refused him audience and is credited with saying:  “That old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than I have done for the murder of my father.”  Berkeley died the following year—of vexation.

--The Secret Destiny of America, New York, Ny., Tarcher/Penguin, 2008, pgs. 209-11

What we have here in Bacon’s Rebellion is a first attempt by the ‘Invisible College’ of secret societies to begin the American Experiment of New Atlantis.  It failed at the time, and Mr Hall shows his displeasure by pouring scorn upon the man who made sure it was a failure:  Sir William Berkeley.

 . . .

The rest is at


--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

1 comment:

  1. For our knowledge of Sir William and his tremendous influence on the development of Southern life, we are indebted to Prof D. H. Fischer's 'Albion's Seed'.

    ReplyDelete