John Custis Sr. (burgess)

[1] Both brothers had settled on what was initially the only shire on Virginia's Eastern Shore, then called Accomac County after a native American settlement.

[8] After fleeing Jamestown in late July 1676, during Bacon's Rebellion, Governor Berkeley took refuge at Arlington plantation, the grand house this John Custis had erected earlier that decade in what had become Northampton County, possibly because sandbars on Old Plantation Creek forced larger ships to anchor well out to sea and made landing enemy troops difficult (and thus made it defensible).

Thus, the vessel was retaken with its crew, and Carver, Giles Bland (a former customs officer) and two other men soon executed for treason, and Berkeley and his loyalists soon sailed to (and retook) Jamestown.

The royal commissioners who investigated the conflict specifically praised Custis' loyalty to the governor, as well as his generous offer to lend the Crown a thousand pounds sterling to provision the king's ships.

[1] After the rebellion was crushed, Northampton County's voters clearly elected John Custis as one of their two representatives in the House of Burgesses (along with Isaac Foxcroft), and he attended the 1677 assembly session at Green Spring.

Furthermore, his younger brother, merchant William Custis came to represent Accomac County (alongside Southey Littleton, whose legislative service had clearly begun the previous year).

However, somehow his name was omitted from the list of Council members when Francis Howard was appointed governor in October 1683, so Custis petitioned the Crown for reinstatement in 1685.

It was possibly the finest mansion erected in the Chesapeake Bay area during the 17th century (rivaled only by Governor Berkeley's Green Spring plantation near the colonial capital at Jamestown).

[11] John Custis prepared his last will in testament in 1691, and on April 15, 1692 resigned from the Virginia Governor's Council, citing extreme violent sicknesses and fits, as well as failing memory and hearing.