He defended himself in several long letters to the Board. He had done no more than defend the Queen's prerogative against the assaults of the Council, he said. If everything they asked were granted them, "her Majesty would have but a skeleton of a government left, and hardly the power of a Doge of Genoa. And I think the question may be put to them as the wise King Solomon did to his mother, why don't they ask the kingdom or the government also?" As for Commissary Blair, he "and his little faction now set up to have the power and interest of turning out and putting in Governors, and affect the title that the great Earl of Warwick had." If he were ousted, he would present himself to the Board, "when I hope I shall not be found to have a cloven foot, to be a fury, or to have snakes instead of hair."[37] If we may credit the reports from Virginia which reached Blair, Ludwell, and Fouace in England in January, 1705, Nicholson began proceedings to "terrify all people" from discussing his conduct. "He sets up inquisition courts, giving commissions to some of his creatures to examine all persons on oath if ever they heard such a man reflect upon the Governor ... which practice is very terrible to all, there being few in Virginia who have not sometimes in private spoke of him as he deserves ... If witnesses are backward they are threatened by the Governor himself and terrified into depositions." When anyone was accused of complaining of him, even in private, he ordered the Attorney General to prosecute him under the law against defaming the Governor passed after Bacon's Rebellion.[38] The Governor had one warm defender in Colonel Robert Quary. In a letter to the Board of Trade he testified that, when Nicholson was appointed, the Councillors expected to "govern and direct all matters," to monopolize all places of profit and honor, and have him "suppress all that were not of their faction." But when they found that he would not be governed by them, they turned upon him with the greatest malice. "They aspersed and blackened him both in the country and by letters to England, as if he had been the greatest monster in nature." He had been guilty of no maladministration in his government "further than some escapes of his passion, which their injustice often forced him to."[39]