Tea was banned in every patriotic household. One evening at Nomini Hall, Mrs. Robert Carter made "a dish of tea" for her husband. "He smelt, sipt, looked." "What is this?" he asked. Then "splash" he emptied the cup in the fire.[15] But what chiefly aroused the ire of the British Ministry was the so-called Boston Tea Party, when fifty or sixty men, disguised as Indians, boarded the tea ships and threw box after box in the harbor, while a large crowd looked on and applauded. This provoked the British Government into making their most serious blunder--the passage of what the Americans called the "Intolerable Acts." The port of Boston was closed; the Massachusetts government was altered to increase the power of the Governor; in certain cases accused persons might be sent to England for trial; the Governors were authorized to requisition buildings for the use of royal troops; the boundaries of the province of Quebec were extended to the Mississippi on the west and the Ohio on the south. The American patriots now realized that they must act with vigor and firmness or lose all that they held most dear. The King and Parliament were determined to force the issue. When the Virginia Assembly met in May, 1774, Henry, Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, and several others met in the Council Chamber in the Capitol to agree on some measure to arouse the people to a sense of the danger. After some discussion it was decided to propose to the Burgesses that they make June 1, the date set for the closing of the port of Boston, a day of general fasting and prayer. The resolution was introduced by Robert Carter Nicholas, and passed without opposition.[16] [Illustration: Lord Dunmore. From the copy in the possession of the Virginia Historical Society of the original portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds.] [Illustration: The Governor's Palace, Williamsburg. Courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg, Inc.] The resolution stated that it was necessary to have a day of "fasting, humiliation, and prayer, devoutly to implore the divine interposition for averting the heavy calamity which threatens destruction to our civil rights, and the evils of civil war; to give us one heart and mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to American rights; and that the minds of his Majesty and his Parliament may be inspired from above with wisdom, moderation, and justice to remove from the loyal people of America all cause of danger from a continued pursuit of measures pregnant with ruin." Dunmore thought the resolution reflected on the King and Parliament, and so made it necessary for him to dissolve the Assembly.[17]