In Virginia the party in favour of independence had been in the minority, until, in November, 1775, the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, had issued a proclamation, offering freedom to all such negroes and indented white servants as might enlist for the purpose of "reducing the colony to a proper sense of its duty." This measure Lord Dunmore hoped would "oblige the rebels to disperse, in order to take care of their families and property." But the object was not attained. The relations between master and slave in Virginia were so pleasant that the offer of freedom fell upon dull, uninterested ears. With light work and generous fare, the condition of the Virginia negro was a happy one. The time had not yet come when he was liable to be torn from wife and children, to die of hardship in the cotton-fields and rice-swamps of the far South. He was proud of his connection with his master's estate and family, and had nothing to gain by rebellion. As for the indented white servants, the governor's proposal to them was of about as much consequence as a proclamation of Napoleon's would have been if, in 1805, he had offered to set free the prisoners in Newgate on condition of their helping him to invade England. But, impotent as this measure of Lord Dunmore's was, it served to enrage the people of Virginia, setting their minds irretrievably against the king and his cause. During the month of November, hearing that a party of "rebels" were on their way from North Carolina to take possession of Norfolk, Lord Dunmore built a rude fort at the Great Bridge over Elizabeth river, which commanded the southern approach to the town. At that time, Norfolk, with about 9,000 inhabitants, was the principal town in Virginia, and the commercial centre of the colony. The loyalist party, represented chiefly by Scottish merchants, was so strong there and so violent that many of the native Virginia families, finding it uncomfortable to stay in their homes, had gone away into the country. The patriots, roused to anger by Dunmore's proclamation, now resolved to capture Norfolk, and a party of sharpshooters, with whom the illustrious John Marshall served as lieutenant, occupied the bank of Elizabeth river, opposite Dunmore's fort. On the 9th of December, after a sharp fight of fifteen minutes, in which Dunmore's regulars lost sixty-one men, while not a single Virginian was slain, the fort was hastily abandoned, and the road to Norfolk was laid open for the patriots. A few days later the Virginians took possession of their town, while Dunmore sought refuge in the Liverpool, ship-of-the-line, which had just sailed into the harbour. On New Year's Day the governor vindictively set fire to the town, which he had been unable to hold against its rightful owners. The conflagration, kindled by shells from the harbour, raged for three days and nights, until the whole town was laid in ashes, and the people were driven to seek such sorry shelter as might save them from the frosts of midwinter.