UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1768-1770. The quartering of troops in Boston. The Massacre, and the removal of the troops. See BOSTON: A. D. 1768; and 1770. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1769. Massachusetts threatened, and Virginia roused to her support. "The proceedings in Massachusetts attracted in England the greatest attention, elicited the severest comment, and, because a military force had been ordered to Boston to support the stand of the administration, created the greatest solicitude. … The king, on opening parliament, characterized the action of Boston as a subversion of the Constitution and evincing a disposition to throw off dependence on Great Britain. The indictment against the colonies was presented in sixty papers laid before parliament. Both Houses declared that the proceedings of the Massachusetts assembly in opposition to the revenue acts were unconstitutional, and derogatory to the rights of the crown and the parliament; that the Circular Letter tended to create unlawful combinations; that the call of a convention by the selectmen of Boston was proof of a design of setting up an independent authority; and both Houses proposed to transport the originators of the obnoxious proceedings to England for trial and condign punishment, under the cover of an obsolete act of Henry VIII. … The administration determined to make an example of Massachusetts, as the ring-leading province in political mischief, by transporting its popular leaders to England to be tried for their lives in the king's bench. Such was the purport of an elaborate despatch which Lord Hillsborough sent to Governor Bernard, directing an inquiry to be instituted into the conduct of any persons who had committed any overt act of resistance to the laws. … Thus a great issue was created that affected all the colonies. … There was no adequate step taken to meet the threatened aggression until the House of Burgesses of Virginia convened in May." _R. Frothingham, The Rise of the Republic of the United States, chapter 6._