Upon the receipt of news of the Declaration of Independence of the American colonies, the royalists showed their zeal for the king by burning the effigies of John Hancock and Samuel Adams on the plaza, near where the constitutional monument now stands. In 1775 some privateers from Carolina captured the brig _Betsy_ off the bar, and unloaded her in sight of the garrison, giving to the captain a bill signed “Clement Lamprière,” and drawn on Miles Brewton, at Charleston, for one thousand pounds sterling. The cargo consisted of one hundred and eleven barrels of powder sent from London, and the capture was a great mortification to the new governor. During the early years of the struggle between the American colonies and the mother country, St. Augustine was the British point of rendezvous and an asylum for the royalists. From Georgia and Carolina there were said to have been seven thousand royalists and slaves who moved to Florida during these years. So hazardous to the colonial interests had the British possession of St. Augustine become, that Governor Houston, of Georgia, urged upon General Howe to attack the place in the spring of 1778. This expedition was never undertaken, though Colonel Fuser, of the Sixtieth Regiment, issued a proclamation on June 27th, 1778, commanding all those who had not entered the militia to join him, as “the rebels might be expected every instant.” The inhabitants of the province, while willing to fight for the king, still demanded the establishment of a representative government. Governor Tonyn, in a letter to Lord George St. German, Secretary of State, says: “I perceive the cry for a provincial legislature to remedy local inconveniences is as loud as ever, and suggestions are thrown out that, without it, people’s property is not secure, and that they must live in a country where they can enjoy to their utmost extent the advantages of the British Constitution and laws formed with their consent. But mention the expediency, propriety, reasonableness, justice, and gratitude of imposing taxes for the expenses of the government, they are all silent, or so exceedingly poor as not to be able to pay the least farthing.” In 1780 Governor Tonyn repaired both lines of defense about the town, strengthened the fortifications, and added several new works. The inhabitants complained bitterly that the burdens of the public defense fell upon them, as their negroes were kept for several months employed upon the king’s works. The governor seems to have considered that loyalty to the king was not to be expected from his new subjects in Florida, or at least was to be found only among Protestants. Writing of the militia, he says: “There are several Minorcans, and I have my doubts as to their loyalty, being of Spanish and French extraction, and of the Roman Catholic religion.”