This last post, situated near the mouth of the river, was especially exposed to attack from the Eastern Shore. A few days after the death of Bacon, Major Robert Beverley, with a small force, sailed across the bay to effect its capture.[692] The rebels "kep a negligent Gard", and were caught completely by surprise. Hansford was taken prisoner, with twenty of his men, and brought in triumph to Accomac.
Here he was at once charged with treason, tried by court martial, and condemned to die. He pleaded passionately to "be shot like a soldier and not to be hanged like a Dog. But it was tould him ... that he was not condemned as he was merely a soldier, but as a Rebell, taken in Arms."[693] To the last he refused to admit that he was guilty of treason. To the crowd that gathered around the scaffold to witness his execution he protested "that he dyed a loyal subject and a lover of his country".
"This business being so well accomplish'd by those who had taken Hansford, ... they had no sooner deliver'd there Fraight at Accomack, but they hoyse up there sayles, and back againe to Yorke River, where with a Marvellous celerity they surprise one Major Cheise-Man, and som others, amongst whom one Capt. Wilford, who (it is saide) in the bickering lost one of his eyes, which he seemed little concern'd at, as knowing that when he came to Accomack, that though he had bin starke blinde, yet the Governour would take care for to afford him a guide, that should show him the way to the Gallows."[694]
The Governor was resolved to make the rebel leaders pay dearly for the indignities they had put upon him. Those that were so luckless as to fall into his hands, were hastened away to their execution with but the mockery of a trial. Doubtless Berkeley felt himself justified in this severity. To him rebellion against the King was not merely a crime, it was a hideous sacrilege. Those guilty of such an enormity should receive no mercy. But this cannot explain or excuse the coarse brutality and savage joy with which he sent his victims to the scaffold. It is impossible not to feel that many of these executions were dictated, not by motives of policy or loyalty, but by vindictiveness.
Nothing can make this more evident that the pathetic story of Madam Cheesman. "When ... the Major was brought in to the Governor's presence, and by him demanded, what made him to ingage in Bacon's designes? Before that the Major could frame an Answer ... his Wife steps in and tould his honr: that it was her provocations that made her Husband joyne in the Cause that Bacon contended for; ading, that if he had not bin influenced by her instigations, he had never don that which he had don. Therefore (upon her bended knees) she desires of his hour ... that shee might be hang'd, and he pardon'd. Though the Governour did know, that that what she had saide, was neare to the truth," he refused her request and spurned her with a vile insult. It is with a sense of relief that we learn that her husband died in prison and was thus saved the ignominy of the gallows.[695]