The Councillors as well as the Burgesses must have been startled when Effingham in reply told them that the King had the right to nullify or revive what laws he pleased, since the only authority the Assembly had to legislate at all rested on a grant from the Throne. They had been under the impression that the right of the people to make laws through their representatives was inherent in all Englishmen. If it were a grant from the King, which the King might at will withdraw, liberty in America rested on a shaky basis indeed. In an address to Effingham they stated that they did not dare "to say what is prerogative and what is not,"[69] but they made it clear that when prerogative was stretched so far that it threatened to enslave them, they would resist by every means within their power. Despots throughout the years have feared a free press, and have either prohibited printing or controlled it for their own purposes. So it was in keeping with the spirit of the Second Stuart Despotism that Charles and James would allow no press in Virginia. It was in 1682 that John Buckner, a prominent merchant and landowner of Gloucester County, and a member of the House of Burgesses, employed William Nuthead to set up a printing establishment at Jamestown. But they had picked an inauspicious time for their venture. Nuthead was ordered to appear before the Council "to answer for his presumption in printing the acts of Assembly ... and several other papers without licence." The Council ordered that "for prevention of all troubles and inconveniences that may be occasioned through the liberty of a press ... Mr. John Buckner and William Nuthead the printer enter into bond for one hundred pounds sterling ... that from and after the date hereof nothing be printed by either of them ... in this colony until the signification of his Majesty's pleasure shall be known."[70] His Majesty's pleasure therein was a foregone conclusion. "Whereas we have taken notice of the inconvenience that may arise by the liberty of printing in Virginia," stated Charles in his instructions to Effingham, "no person is to be permitted to use any press for printing upon any occasion whatsoever."[71] So Nuthead took the press to Maryland and for nearly half a century Virginia was without a printer.[72]