it off. One was 29,
the other 65; one was a first-time burgess, the other a veteran member.
(Henry was not as unknown as popular myth would have it. He had been in
Williamsburg during the debates over the remonstrance and had
represented a client in an election fraud case before the house.)
First, they had benefited from the departure of two-thirds of the
burgesses; second, there was the frustration over parliament's outright
refusal to even read the remonstrance; third, there was the formation,
probably by Johnston, of a coalition of the younger generation of
planter-gentry living in the Piedmont, the ambitious backcountry
burgesses, and the Northern Neck faction led by Francis Lighfoot Lee of
Loudoun and Thomas Ludwell Lee of Stafford; fourth, there was Henry
himself, of whom Jefferson at a time when he had come to dislike Henry,
still could say "he was the best humoured man in society I almost ever
knew, and the greatest orator that ever lived. He had a consummate
knowledge of the human heart, which directing the efforts of his
eloquence enabled him to attain a degree of popularity with the people
at large never perhaps equalled."[18]

[18] The record is sparse because no recorded votes were kept; so
the only known votes in favor of the Resolves were: Henry of
Louisa, Johnston of Fairfax, John Fleming of Cumberland, Henry
Blagrave and William Taylor of Lunenburg, Robert Munford and
Edmund Taylor of Mecklenburg, and Paul Carrington and Thomas
Reade of Charlotte. As the twists of fate would have it, all
these counties except Fairfax were named for the Hanoverians. It
is almost certain the Lee brothers voted "yes".

With the five resolves passed, Henry departed Williamsburg. Enough
Tidewater votes were corralled by Robinson and Councilor Peter Randolph
the following day, the 31st, to rescind and expunge from the record the
fifth resolve. Much to the chagrin of Fauquier, no attempt was made to
remove the first four.

As with the sixth and seventh resolves, this last-ditch effort made no
difference. The public printer, conservative Joseph Royle of the
Virginia Gazette, refused to publish the resolves at all. What
went into print outside the colonies were the four true resolves, plus
the three spurious ones, often made more radical in tone as they were
reprinted. The effect was electric. If this was the expression of the
Virginia House of Burgesses, long thought to be the