The executions continued for several months. Thomas Young, James Wilson, Henry Page, and Thomas Hall were executed on January 12, 1677; William Drummond and John Baptista on January 20; James Crews, William Cookson, and John Digbie on January 24; Giles Bland and Anthony Arnold on March 8; John Isles and Richard Pomfrey on March 15; and John Whitson and William Scarburgh on March 16. There is no telling how many Berkeley might have hanged had not the Assembly asked him to stop.
The people were deeply angered at the governor's brutality. Governor Notley thought that "were there any person bold and courageous in Virginia that dared venture his neck, the commons of Virginia would enmire themselves as deep in rebellion as ever they did in Bacon's time." And for months in hundreds of humble cottages men were on the lookout for the return of Lawrence, ready to seize their arms and follow him in a new uprising.
There was no hope of relief from the new Assembly which met at Green Spring, February 20, 1677. William Sherwood said that most of the Burgesses were the governor's "own creatures and chose by his appointments." Jeffreys testified that they had been "not so legally nor freely chosen," and that the "Council, Assembly, and people" were "overawed" by Berkeley. That Berkeley allowed such an Assembly to re-enact in substantially the same form several of Bacon's laws, shows that he was not entirely deaf to the rumblings of a new rebellion.
In the meanwhile King Charles had appointed Colonel Herbert Jeffreys, Sir John Berry, and Colonel Francis Moryson commissioners to go to Virginia to inquire into the people's grievances. At the same time he ordered Berkeley to return to England "with all possible speed." During his absence Jeffreys was to act in his place with the title of Lieutenant Governor. With them came the redcoats.
No sooner had the commissioners arrived than Berkeley became involved in a bitter quarrel with them. When they told him to obey the King's orders to come to England, he made excuses to linger until he had taken his revenge on the rebels. Jeffreys brought with him a proclamation pardoning all the rebels with the sole exception of Bacon, but when Berkeley published it he had the audacity to exempt from it not only two men who had died during the war, fourteen who had already been executed, and twenty-six others whom he mentioned by name, but all those "now in prison for rebellion or under bond for the same." Of those in prison and not mentioned by name in the proclamation Robert Stoakes, John Isles, Richard Pomfrey, John Whitson, and William Scarburgh were later executed.