Bacon and his following thus came peaceably into Jamestown, but with the somewhat fell determination to burn the place.
It should "harbor no more rogues." What Bacon, Lawrence, Drummond, Hansford, and others really hoped--whether they forecasted a republican Virginia finally at peace and prosperous--whether they saw in a vision a new capital, perhaps at Middle Plantation, perhaps at the Falls of the Far West, a capital that should be without old, tyrannic memories--cannot now be said.

However it all may be, they put torch to the old capital town and soon saw it consumed, for it was no great place, and not hard to burn.
Jamestown had hardly ceased to smoke when news came that loyalists under Colonel Brent were gathering in northern counties.

Bacon, now ill but energetic to the end, turned with promptness to meet this new alarm.

He crossed the York and marched northward through Gloucester County.

But the rival forces did not come to a fight.