With the design of effecting some final disposition in regard to the title of the Transylvania proprietors, Judge Henderson and Colonel Williams set off from Boonesborough about May 1st, intending first to appeal to the Virginia Convention and ultimately to lay their claims before the Continental Congress. "Since they have gone," reports Floyd to Preston, "I am told most of the men about Harrodsburg have re-assumed their former resolution of not complying with any of the office rules whatever. Jack Jones, it is said, is at the head of the party & flourishes away prodigiously." [182] John Gabriel Jones was the mere figurehead in the revolt. The real leader, the brains of the conspiracy, was the unscrupulous George Rogers Clark. At Clark's instance, an eight-day election was held at Harrodsburg (June 7-15), at which time a petition to the Virginia Convention was drawn up; [183] and Clark and Jones were elected delegates. Clark's plan, the scheme of a bold revolutionist, was to treat with Virginia for terms; and if they were not satisfactory, to revolt and, as he says, "Establish an Independent Government" ... "giving away great part of the Lands and disposing of the Remainder." In a second petition, prepared by the self-styled "Committee of West Fincastle" (June 20th), it was alleged that "if these pretended Proprietors have leave to continue to act in their arbitrary manner out the controul of this colony [Virginia] the end must be evident to every well wisher to American Liberty." [184] The contest which now ensued between Richard Henderson and George Rogers Clark, waged upon the floor of the convention and behind the scenes, resulted in a conclusion that was inevitable at a moment in American history marked by the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Virginia, under the leadership of her new governor, Patrick Henry, put an end to the proprietary rule of the Transylvania Company. On December 7th such part of Transylvania as lay within the chartered limits of Virginia was erected by the legislature of that colony into the County of Kentucky. The proprietary form of government with its "marks of vassalage," although liberalized with the spirit of democracy, was unendurable to the independent and lawless pioneers, already intoxicated with the spirit of freedom swept in on the first fresh breezes of the Revolution. Yet it is not to be doubted that the Transylvania Company, through the courage and moral influence of its leaders, made a permanent contribution to the colonization of the West, which, in providential timeliness and effective execution, is without parallel in our early annals. [185]