e a little
more clearly defined when the Convention instructed each county to elect
two delegates to sit in future Conventions.

April 20, 1775. Lord Dunmore watched the events of 1774-1775 with
helpless alarm. Particularly frightening for him was the formation of the
"Independent Companies" in the spring of 1775. On the night of April 20
he took the precaution of having the small store of arms and ammunition
in the magazine at Williamsburg removed and placed on H.M.S. Fowey
in the York River. On the morning of the 21st, the people of Williamsburg
learned what the Governor had done during the night and were vastly
excited. An incredible wave of fury spread through the Colony and
everywhere men took up arms. All the pent up passion of the past months
was turned against the unfortunate Governor.

April 28, 1775. At the height of the excitement over the powder
magazine affair, news came from the northward that colonials had engaged
British regulars at Concord and Lexington.

May 3, 1775. Thoroughly frightened, Lord Dunmore made a public
proclamation on May 3 in which he attempted to justify his actions of
April 20 and to pacify the people. Beyond being pacified, the people
cheered Patrick Henry who marched upon Williamsburg with the Hanover
Independent Company and stopped short of the town only because Governor
Dunmore sent him 300 pounds to pay for the powder taken from the public
magazine.

June 1, 1775. Fortified with Lord North's conciliatory proposals,
Dunmore made his last bid to regain control of the colony by recalling
the General Assembly to Williamsburg on June 1, 1775. The Burgesses
refused to re-open the courts as Dunmore asked; they approved the
proceedings of the Continental Congress and the colonial Conventions
without a dissenting vote; and then they allowed Jefferson to reply to
North's proposal in terms of his Summary View of the year before.

June 8, 1775. Lord Dunmore wrote the Assembly that he considered
Williamsburg no longer safe for him and his family and that he had taken
up residence in the Fowey in the York River. When the General
Assembly refused to do business with him there and proceeded to operate
independently of the Governor, royal government in Virginia was virtually
at an end. The General Assembly adjourned itself on June 24 to October
12, 1775, and then to March 7, 1776, and finally to May 16, 1776, but a
quorum never appeared.

July 17, 1775. The July Convention completed the tra