The next step was taken after Governor Tryon had promised to hear the complaints of the people and punish the men guilty of extortion. Under this promise Husbands brought suit against Fanning for unjust imprisonment. At once the governor showed his real sentiment. He demanded the complete submission of the Regulators, called out fifteen hundred armed men, and was said to intend to rouse the Indians to cut off the men of Orange County as rebels. In spite of this threatening attitude of the governor, Husbands was acquitted on every charge, and Fanning was found guilty on six separate indictments. There was also a verdict given against three Regulators. This was the decision of the jury alone. That of the judges showed a different spirit. They punished Fanning by fining him one penny on each charge, while the Regulators were each sentenced to fifty pounds fine and six months' imprisonment. To support this one-sided justice Tryon threatened the Regulators with fire and sword, and they remained quietly at home, brooding moodily over their failure but hesitating to act. We must now go on to the year 1770. The old troubles had continued,--illegal fees and taxes, peculation and robbery. The sheriffs and tax-collectors were known to have embezzled over fifty thousand pounds. The costs of suits at law had so increased that justice lay beyond the reach of the poor. And back of all this reigned Governor Tryon in his palace, supporting the spoilers of the people. So incensed did they become that at the September court, finding that their cases were to be ignored, they seized Fanning and another lawyer and beat them soundly with cowhide whips, ending by a destructive raid on Fanning's house. The Assembly met in December. It had been chosen under a state of general alarm. The Regulators elected many representatives, among them the persecuted Herman Husbands, who was chosen to represent Orange County. This defiant action of the people roused the "Great Wolf" again. Husbands had been acquitted of everything charged against him, yet Tryon had him voted a disturber of the peace and expelled from the House, and immediately afterward had him arrested and put in prison without bail, though there was not a grain of evidence against him. The governor followed this act of violence with a "Riot Act" of the most oppressive and illegal character. Under it if any ten men assembled and did not disperse when ordered to do so, they were to be held guilty of felony. For a riot committed either before or after this act was published any persons accused might be tried before the Superior Court, no matter how far it was from their homes, and if they did not appear within sixty days, with or without notice, they were to be proclaimed outlaws and to forfeit their lives and property. The governor also sent out a request for volunteers to march against the "rebels," but the Assembly refused to grant money for this warlike purpose.