The reply of the Burgesses, which was almost certainly written by Jefferson, is notable because of the clearness with which it exposed the unconstitutionally of the British position. They had viewed the proposal with pain and disappointment, for it merely changed the form of oppression without lightening its burden. "The British government has no right to intermeddle with the support of civil government in the colonies. For us, not for them, has government been instituted here.... We cannot conceive that any other legislature has a right to prescribe either the number or pecuniary appointment of our officers." The claim of Parliament of the right to tax the people of the colony had no precedent. Even the act of 1680 giving the King a perpetual revenue was passed, not by Parliament, but by his Majesty "with the consent of the General Assembly."[37] The Burgesses were not willing to purchase exemption from an unjust taxation by saddling the people with a perpetual tax to be disposed of by the King or Parliament. "We have a right to give our money as the Parliament does theirs, without coercion.... It is not merely the mode of raising, but the freedom of granting our money for which we have contended, without which we possess no check on the royal prerogative." Upon receiving assurance that no harm was intended his family, Dunmore had brought them back to the Palace. But on June 8, before daybreak, he, Lady Dunmore, the children, his secretary, and some of the servants stole out and went on board the _Fowey_. "My house was kept in continued alarm and threatened every night with an assault," Dunmore explained. "Surrounded as I was by armed men ... and situated so far from any place where men-of-war can approach, ... I could not think it safe to continue in that city."[38] The Assembly urged the Governor to return, but he refused. So on the night of June 24, a large body of men forced their way into the Palace by bursting open a window, and carried off several hundred stand of arms which had been kept in the hall. Some days later another group entered the building, went from room to room breaking into cabinets, and carried off arms of various sorts.[39] And now Williamsburg became an armed camp. Bands of horse and foot, in uniforms and each company displaying their distinctive badge flocked in. Some of them lodged in the Capitol, the cavalry encamped on the Palace Green.[40] One wonders whether these men knew that a century earlier Nathaniel Bacon had assembled his men on or near this spot, or whether any of them realized that they had fought for the same cause as they, the cause of liberty?