The Privy Council referred the charges to the Lords of Trade and Plantations. It must have been with surprise that they listened as the petition was read. We appeal to "your Majesty for relief of ourselves and other subjects of Virginia from many great grievances and pressures we lie under by reason of the unusual, insolent, and arbitrary methods of government, as well as wicked and scandalous examples of life, which have been now for divers years past put in practice by Nicholson, which we have hitherto in vain endeavored by more soft and gentle applications to himself to remedy and prevent. But to our unspeakable grief we have reaped no other fruit ... but that thereby we have so highly exasperated the revengeful mind of Nicholson to the height of implacable malice and enmity against ourselves and the better part of the people ... that without your Majesty's seasonable interposition we fear the dangerous consequences, not only in fomenting lasting feuds and acrimonies among the people here, but in endangering the public peace of Virginia."[33] During the summer Blair had not been idle. It is probable that the little colony of Virginians in London got together to plan their strategy. When the matter came before the Lords of Trade, the Commissary was armed with affidavits from Fouace, Captain James Moodie, and others, and letters from Philip Ludwell, Junior, and Benjamin Harrison to the elder Ludwell, accusing Nicholson of tyranny. At the hearing Wallace, George Luke, and Robert Beverley were called on to tell their stories of persecution and injustice. Hearing that John Thrale was agent for Nicholson, the Lords called him in. He made the best defense he could, but he was ignorant of the whole matter, and he had not witnesses to refute the charges. When he demanded particular instances of misgovernment and injustice, Blair and Beverley overwhelmed him with them.[34] To make the Governor's case hopeless, Thrale died in the midst of the hearings, leaving him without anyone to defend him.[35] Late in October, 1704, when the first word of the petition reached Nicholson he was heard "to make a terrible imprecation, vowing to the living God that he would pursue the petitioners with eternal vengeance." At a meeting of the Council he glared at the members. "Whoever they were that signed that petition I hope they will be obliged to stand by it in England and that such of them as are there will be obliged to stay and those here to go thither, where it is my desire to come to a fair hearing," he told them.[36]