At the time the enclosed manuscript was written, robert harley, later prime minister and Earl of Oxford, was speaker of the House of Commons and a key adviser to Queen Anne (DNB description begins H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, In Association with The British Academy, From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, Oxford, 2004, 60 vols. description ends ).

In the cover letter to Harley, dated 13 July 1705, the author of the account signed as “T. M.” Although TJ does not appear to have made the connection himself, the initials stood for Thomas Mathew, a planter and merchant who lived in Northumberland County for a couple of decades. Mathew also owned land in Stafford County and represented that county, not Northumberland, in the General Assembly that met in 1676 in the midst of the rebellion led by Nathaniel Bacon. His account emphasized his own efforts to avoid taking sides in the conflict, while indicating the unsteady and often harsh leadership of Governor William Berkeley and portraying Bacon as a rash, honorable youth who had been influenced by some of the governor’s more experienced opponents. When asked by Harley to write his narrative, Mathew had been living in England for about 25 years (Charles M. Andrews, ed., Narratives of the Insurrections, 1675-1690 [New York, 1915], 11-41; Warren M. Billings, ed., The Papers of Sir William Berkeley, 1605-1677 [Richmond, Va., 2007], 213n).