So negotiations had to begin again. In the end Arlington and Culpeper agreed to give up their patent in return for a new one for the Northern Neck assuring them the quit rents and escheated property. Having gained this concession the agents then pleaded for a charter for the colony guaranteeing the liberties of the colonists. In it there were to be promises that they should continue to have their immediate dependence on the Crown, and that no tax should be laid upon them but by the consent of the Assembly. The King in Council assented to the charter, and twice it reached the Great Seal. But there it was held up. In the meanwhile news came of Bacon's Rebellion, and the King reversed his order. Later he did grant letters patent, but they contained little more than the promise that the colony should be directly dependent on the Crown.
This whole affair caused universal resentment in the colony, and the expense of the negotiations in England made the people "desperately uneasy." Berkeley reported that "the two great taxes of sixty pounds per poll to buy in the Northern patent made those that thought they were not concerned in it ripe for mutiny." The agents, too, warned that the Arlington and Culpeper grant might cause the common people to rise in arms and perhaps bring about "the utter dispersion" of the planters.
With the staple crop of the colony a drug on the market because of the Navigation Acts, with tax piled on tax to buy back the liberties of the people from favorites of the King, with self-government made a mockery by the corrupting of the Burgesses, with the small farmers in rags, the people were ready to rise in arms at the least excuse. Before young Nathaniel Bacon set foot on Virginia soil Berkeley and his henchmen were trembling in their boots. The governor thought that if an opportunity offered itself the planters might go over to the Dutch "in hopes of bettering their condition by sharing the plunder of the country with them."
Into this mass of dynamite an Indian war threw a torch. The resulting explosion was Bacon's Rebellion.
In 1674 two mutinies had failed, it was said because the people, after assembling in arms, could not find a leader. Two years later, when again angry men gathered, they found their leader in Bacon. This young man was the son of Thomas Bacon, a wealthy English squire. At an early age he entered St. Catherine's Hall, Cambridge, as a fellow-commoner. There he seems to have idled away his time, and when he "broke into some extravagances" his father withdrew him. This apparent misfortune was turned to good effect when his father secured for him as tutor the great naturalist, John Ray. Ray found Nathaniel a lad of "very good parts and a quick wit," but "impatient of labor." When he was sixteen he accompanied Ray on a tour of Europe. On his return he re-entered Cambridge and later studied at Gray's Inn.