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 Henry, lifted out of self, shouted those immortal words, "Tarquin and Cæsar had each his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III."—and here he was interrupted by the cry of "Treason!"—"may profit by their example; if this be treason, make the most of it." "This is the way," says Bancroft, "that the fire began. Virginia rang the alarm bell for the continent."

After this, with each of the great epochs in the constitutional development following the Stamp Act, Williamsburg, either through the men born and raised in the place, or educated at its famous college of William and Mary, had an imperishable connection. It was Richard Bland, an alumnus of the college, who first announced, in a pamphlet entitled ''An Enquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies'', the startling doctrine that America was no part of the kingdom of England, and had never been united with it except by the common tie of the crown. Dabney Carr, another alumnus of the college, was the patron of the resolutions in 1773 for appointment of intercolonial committees of correspondence,—the first step taken towards united action on the part of the colonies. Then it was Peyton Randolph,