Bacon's rebellion, Virginia, 1676-1677: Lydia, the wife of the rebel Edmund Cheeseman, faints as he is condemned for treason by the governor of Virgina, William Berkeley; a toothless old lady is restrained from attacking her. Coloured etching by A. Bobbet after F. Darley.

"Captured in York County in November 1676, about a month after Bacon's death, Cheesman was accused of treason. His wife contrived to be present when Governor Sir William Berkeley questioned him, and she pleaded with the governor to spare her husband's life on the grounds that "if he had not bin influenc'd by her instigations, he had never don that which he had don." On "her bended knees" she begged the governor "that shee might be hang'd, and he pardon'd." Her eloquence and bravery failed to persuade the governor to release or spare him, but before his trial could take place, Edmund Cheesman "dyed in prisson, of feare, Greife, or bad useage.""--Virginia Bernhard, 'Edmund Cheesman (d. 1677)', Encyclopedia Virginia (Virginia Foundation for the Humanities), 22 August 2013, online, accessed 21 May 2018