Charles the Second having invaded England at the head of a Scottish army, was utterly defeated and overthrown by Cromwell, at Worcester, September the 3d, 1651. Charles himself, not long after, with difficulty and in disguise, escaped to France. In September of the same year the council of state, of which Bradshaw was president, issued instructions for Captain Robert Dennis, Mr. Richard Bennet, Mr. Thomas Steg,[216:A] and Captain William Clayborne, appointed commissioners, for the reducement of Virginia and the inhabitants thereof, to their due obedience to the Commonwealth of Virginia. A fleet was put under command of Captain Dennis, and the commissioners embarked in the Guinea frigate. They were empowered to assure pardon and indemnity to all the inhabitants of the said plantations that shall submit unto the present government and authority, as it is established in the Commonwealth of England. In case they shall not submit by fair ways and means, the commissioners were to use all acts of hostility that lay in their power to enforce them; and if they should find the people so to stand out as that they could by no other ways or means reduce them to their due obedience, they, or any two or more of them, whereof Captain Robert Dennis was to be one, had the power to appoint captains and other officers, and to raise forces within each of the aforesaid plantations, for the furtherance of the service; and such persons as should come in and serve as soldiers, if their masters should stand in opposition to the government of the English Commonwealth, might be discharged and set free from their masters, by the commissioners. A similar measure was adopted by Lord Dunmore in 1776. In case of the death of Captain Dennis, his place was to be filled by Captain Edmund Curtis, commander of the Guinea frigate.[217:A] It is a mistake to suppose that the members of the Long Parliament were all of them, or a majority of them, Puritans, in the religious sense of the term; but they were so in political principles. In March, 1652, Captain Dennis arrived at Jamestown, and demanded a surrender of the colony. It is said by some historians that Sir William Berkley, either with a hope of repelling them, or of commanding better terms, prepared for a gallant resistance, and undertook to strengthen himself by making use of several Dutch ships,[217:B] which happened to be there engaged in a contraband trade, and which he hired for the occasion; that there chanced to be on board of the parliament's fleet some goods belonging to two members of the Virginia council, and that Dennis sent them word that their goods should be forfeited if the colony was not immediately surrendered; and that the threat kindled dissensions in the council, and the governor found himself constrained to yield on condition of a general amnesty.[217:C]