The Burgesses, hearing the hubbub, rushed to the windows of their hall on the second story of the statehouse to witness the exciting scenes below. Bacon had asked them to grant him his commission, and now he called up to them, "You Burgesses, I expect your speedy result." Whereupon his men cocked their fusils and aimed them at the windows. "For God's sake hold your hands, forbear a little and you shall have what you please," cried the Burgesses.[43] And have it they did. It was now Berkeley's turn to be humiliated. He was forced to make Bacon General of all the forces in Virginia. When this was followed with a demand that he write the King a letter testifying to Bacon's loyalty and the legality of all he had done, he could no longer contain himself. Rushing out he threw back his coat and cried out; "Here, shoot me, fore God fair mark." Bacon replied that he would not hurt a hair of his head. And in the end he got the letter he wanted.[44] He also got "the redress of the people's grievances," he told Berkeley he had come for. He mounted the stairs to the long room where the Burgesses sat and "pressed hard, nigh an hour's harangue," not only on preserving the colony from the Indians, but on "inspecting the revenues, the exorbitant taxes, and redressing the grievances of that deplorable country." Then, to his surprise, he learned that a series of reform laws had already been put through. Bacon's escape from Jamestown had confronted the Assembly with a completely changed situation. No longer was he a virtual prisoner under the Governor's eye and his veterans without a leader. Now he was at their head once more to march on the town and revenge their wrongs with arms in their hands. "We have all the reason in the world to suspect that their designs are ruinous," said Philip Ludwell. So the pro-Bacon majority in the Assembly took advantage of the general alarm to rush through a remarkable series of reform laws that struck at the very basis of Berkeley's power. Sir William certainly would not have affixed his signature had he not considered his situation desperate. Some months later, after the rebellion had been suppressed, all the laws of this session were repealed on the ground that they had been secured by violence. These bills may have been outlined by Bacon, Lawrence, and Drummond during their famous midnight conference and introduced by some friend in the House. They may have been drawn up by the committee on grievances. Thomas Blayton was later accused of being "Bacon's great engine" in the Assembly, and James Minge, the clerk, of being "another Bacon's great friends in forming the laws." Virginia historians have long called them Bacon's Laws and rightly, since they struck at the abuses he had denounced, were passed in an Assembly dominated by his friends, and under the pressure of his armed forces.