alteration or amendment after it was attested by the Clerk of the General Assembly as assented to, and that it had by that the force of a Law.... I sent them word again that though any bill was assented to by mee and the Council, yet if I should afterwards perseive it would prove prejudicial ... I had power to refuse the signing of it by vertue of His Majesty's negative voice.... But all would not persuade them out of their obstinacy, nay tho' I offered to lay that Bill aside till His Majesty's pleasure should bee known therein; And to sign all the others.... But nothing would please them but Invading, if not destroying, His Majesty's Prerogative." The Burgesses declared that they did not contest the Governor's right to the veto, but contended that when once he signed a bill, "it could not faile of having ye force of a Law".[993] Effingham, they complained, was claiming a "double negative Voice". So angry did they become that they refused to apportion the levy for defraying the public charges, and after many days of bitter contention the Governor was forced to prorogue them. "I did not disolve them," he wrote the Privy Council, "for these reasons. Because if his Majesty shall think fitt to have them dissolved, it will bee soe great a rebuke to them, when done by his Majesty's special command, that I hope it will deter them for the future to bee soe obstinate and peevish."[994] Accordingly, in August, 1686, the King wrote the Governor, "Whereas, we have been informed of ye irregular and tumultuous proceedings of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, at their late meeting, the members thereof having ... presumed so far as to raise contests touching ye power of ye Negative Voice ... which wee cannot attribute to any other Cause then the disaffected & unquiet Dispositions of those Members.... Wee have thought fitt hereby as a mark of our displeasure ... to Charge ... you forthwith to Dissolve the present Assembly."[995] When this order reached Virginia the Assembly was again in session. "After I had passed the Acts," wrote Effingham, "I ordered His Majesty's Letter to bee publickly read to them, and then Dissolved them ... and told them they were the first Assembly which had been soe dissolved and I hoped they would bee the last that should deserve it. I ordered copies of his Majesty's Letter to bee sent to the several County-Courts, that all the Inhabitants might know how displeasing such proceedings were to his Majesty."[996] "And now," he added, "the public debts being paid,... I shall not for the future have soe frequent Assemblys."[997]