Thomas Mathews tells us that it was "the received opinion in Virginia" that the Indian war was the excuse for Bacon's Rebellion rather than the cause. Since Mathews took part in the uprising and later wrote an account of it, he should know. He even goes so far as to say that it was Thomas Lawrence, not Bacon, who was chiefly responsible for the uprising. Bacon "was too young," he points out, "too much a stranger there, and of a disposition too precipitate to manage things to that length they were carried, had not thoughtful Mr. Lawrence been at the bottom."
This man had his personal grievance, Mathews states, for he had been cheated out of a "considerable estate on behalf of a corrupt favorite." His wife kept a tavern at Jamestown, which gave him an opportunity to meet persons from all parts of the colony. So he filled their ears with complaints of the governor. Mathews himself had heard him suggest "some expedient not only to repair his great loss, but therewith to see those abuses rectified that the country was oppressed with through ... the forwardness, avarice, and French despotic methods of the governor." As for Bacon and his adherents, they "were esteemed as but wheels agitated by the weight" of Lawrence's resentments, after their rage had been raised to a high pitch by Berkeley's failure to put a stop to the effusions of blood by the Indians.
Lawrence had the hearty support of William Drummond, a Scotsman who also resided in Jamestown. Like Lawrence he had a grievance against Berkeley. In fact the governor was inclined to believe that he had been "the original cause of the whole rebellion." We know that Lawrence and Drummond stood at Bacon's elbow from the beginning to the end. The importance of the part they played may be gauged by the bitterness of Berkeley's resentment. "I so hate Drummond and Lawrence that though they could put the country in peace in my hands, I would not accept it from such villains," he declared.
But whatever was the role of these two men, whatever the part played by Bacon, the rebellion is a landmark in the development of self-government in Virginia. Though Bacon met an untimely death, though Drummond was led to the gallows, though Lawrence disappeared in the icy forest, their efforts were not in vain. They, and the thousands who supported them, had taught future governors that there was a limit to oppression beyond which they dare not go. The roar of their cannon proclaimed to the world that Virginians would resist to the end all attempts to deprive them of their heritage of English liberty.