From July 17 to August 26, 1775, the Third Virginia Convention was held. The meeting place was Richmond, and Peyton Randolph was elected president of the convention. George Mason had been appointed to succeed George Washington at this convention because Washington was busily engaged as Commander-in-Chief of the American Army. Since Governor Dunmore had already fled from the colony, the royal government had been theoretically dissolved and Virginia gained the status of an independent state. Therefore, the members of this convention believed that they had to assume responsibility for governing Virginia under the circumstances. Consequently, the one hundred and fifteen delegates present proposed acts and passed them as laws called ordinances. Ordinances passed contained the following provisions: (1) the organization of military forces for the defense of Virginia into two regiments; (2) the creation of an executive body called the Committee of Safety to act as the government while the convention was in recess; (3) a plan for adequate revenue for the provisional government and for the Army of Virginia; (4) the establishment of executive county committees; (5) the regulation of the election of delegates to future conventions; (6) the election of new representatives to a future Continental Congress, and (7) the division of Virginia into sixteen military districts. On August 17, 1775, the first Committee of Safety for Virginia was appointed by the Virginia Convention of July 1775. It consisted of eleven members, namely, Richard Bland, Carter Braxton, William Cabell, Paul Carrington, Dudley Digges, Thomas Ludwell Lee, George Mason, James Mercer, John Page, Edmund Pendleton and John Tabb. Edmund Pendleton was the chairman of this committee. Various members of the Committee of Safety actually ruled Virginia from the time it ceased to be a British colony until it officially became an independent state.