A few days later the governor summoned the Burgesses to meet with the Council in the Court Room of the State House. When all were seated he stood up and said: "If there be joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth, there is joy now, for we have a penitent sinner come before us. Call Mr. Bacon."
When Bacon stepped forward, fell on his knees, and handed in his submission, the governor resumed: "God forgive you! I forgive you!"
"And all that were with him?" asked one of the Councillors.
"Yes, and all that were with him," replied the governor.
"Mr. Bacon,'" he added, "if you will live civilly but till next Quarter Court, I will promise to restore you again to your place there." But he decided not to wait so long, and the following day permitted him to resume his seat.
We are left in no doubt as to why Berkeley was so lenient. "Why did I not put him to death when I had him in my power?" he asked later. "I must have been judge, jury, and executioner to have done it, for the Assembly ... were all picked for him. The Council frightened with hearing 2000 men were armed to deliver him." Philip Ludwell wrote Lady Berkeley who a few weeks before had sailed for England, that she must wonder why instead of death "such favors were heaped on." But it was unavoidable, since hundreds of enraged men were within a day's march of Jamestown, and the forces at hand to oppose them secretly in sympathy with Bacon. "There is not a part of the country free from the infection. Never was there so great a madness as the people generally were seized with."
But in restoring Bacon to the Council Berkeley was no doubt actuated as much by policy as by fear, for it was better to have him there where he could keep his eye on him than in the House of Burgesses where he might attempt to carry through reform legislation.
By this time anyone less stubborn and arbitrary than Berkeley would have learned his lesson. On June 12, when Bacon was still in the governor's power, Philip Ludwell wrote his brother: "It now looks like general ruin for the country.... The governor seems determined to leave for England.... If he does he leaves a lost country." Had he given Bacon a commission to fight the Indians and permitted the Assembly to carry out adequate reforms in the government, the people might have been satisfied. But when the Assembly met things seemed to be going in the old way.