He was welcomed to Williamsburg like a conquering hero. A detachment of cavalry met him at the Pamunkey River and escorted him the rest of the way. Two miles from the city they were joined by a company of infantry. At sunset, as they entered Williamsburg, they were received by the ringing of bells and the cheers of the crowds in the streets. At dark every house was illuminated. Dunmore thought "this pompous military exhibition" had been planned "to raise the importance of the members of this new created power, the Congress, before the people." And the "appearance of numbers of the Burgesses in the clothes of the American troops, wearing a shirt of coarse linen or canvas over their clothes and a tomahawk by their sides," added fuel to the fire.[34] The Assembly had been in session but three days when several overzealous young men broke into the magazine to take out some of the arms. They stumbled against a cord which had been attached to a gun pointed at the entrance, which went off wounding two of them. This aroused the people to action, and the next day at noon an angry crowd, among them several Burgesses, entered the magazine and carried off about 400 stand of arms. A committee of the House of Burgesses persuaded the people to return the arms, and then set a military guard around the magazine. "So the custody of the magazine and public stores is thus wrested out of the hands of the Governor," complained Dunmore.[35] At the opening of the Assembly the Governor began by urging the acceptance of the resolutions which Lord North had pushed through Parliament in February, as the basis for reconciliation. These resolutions promised that if any colony would raise of its own authority the cost of its own government, Parliament would not tax that colony. In other words, if the Americans guaranteed to pay into the hands of the King's Governors funds sufficient to make them independent of the Assemblies, Parliament would not take their money from them to do so. The Burgesses must have been indignant when Dunmore told them that he had strong hopes a consideration of this offer would bring to an end the disputes with the mother country.[36]