On the 1st of June the Boston Port Bill was to be enforced. The day was observed in Williamsburg and elsewhere as a season of fasting and prayer.[74] All business ceased. Flags were draped in crape, and hung at half-mast. Funeral bells were tolled. Less than three million of people were rising in opposition to the despotism of one of the most powerful empires on the globe. Every thoughtful man must have been pale with apprehension. The odds against the colonies were fearful. The king and his courtiers felt that they had but to close the hand that grasped the throat of the colonies, and inevitable strangulation would ensue. The awful cloud was growing blacker every day. There was no alternative for the Americans, but to bow their necks to the yoke of the cruel taskmaster, and surrender all their liberties, or to engage in a conflict where it would seem that the chances were hundreds to one against them. Issues awful beyond conception were at stake. Solemnity sat on all countenances. The king of England appointed General Thomas Gage to command the military forces in Massachusetts. The general had said to the king: “The Americans will be lions only so long as the English are lambs. Give me five regiments and I will keep Boston quiet.” Gage issued a proclamation denouncing the contemplated league as _traitorous_, and as consequently justly consigning all who should join it, to the scaffold. He ostentatiously encamped a force of artillery and infantry on the Common; and prohibited all public meetings, except the annual town meetings in March and May. Washington returned to Mount Vernon the latter part of June. He presided at a convention of the inhabitants of Fairfax county, and was appointed chairman of a committee to express the sentiments of the meeting in view of the despotic acts of Parliament. The Fairfaxes, with their large wealth and their intimate associations with the British aristocracy, were exceedingly reluctant to break with the mother country. Bryan Fairfax, a very amiable man, with all of the gentle, and none of the stern attributes of humanity, occupied a beautiful mansion called Tarlston Hall, on an estate near Mount Vernon. He wrote to Washington, disapproving of the strong public measures which were adopted, and urging a petition to the throne. Washington replied: “I would heartily join you in your political sentiments, as far as relates to a humble and dutiful petition to the throne, provided there was the most distant hope of success. But have we not tried this already? Have we not addressed the Lords and remonstrated to the Commons? And to what end? Does it not appear clear as the sun in its meridian brightness, that there is a regular, systematical plan to fix the right and practice of taxation upon us?”