May 28, 1763. The defeat of the French in America introduced new stresses and strains in the British Empire. Differences between the colonies and Mother Country began to appear immediately and with increasing frequency and intensity. The Bland Report of 1763 made to the House of Burgesses revealed one point of conflict between the two. Virginia had in part financed her contribution to the recent war by issuing paper money backed by taxation. The British merchants, creditors of the colonial planters, feared inflation and were bitterly attacking the policy of printing paper money in the colonies. Defending Virginia's actions, the Bland Report presented the American argument for paper money. The British merchants carried the day to their own hurt by securing an Act of Parliament in 1764 forbidding the future issue of paper currency in the colonies.
October 7, 1763. Another cause for colonial resentment at war's end was the King's proclamation closing the trans-Allegheny west to settlement.
December, 1763. One consequence of the Parsons' Causes was the sudden emergence of young Patrick Henry on the political scene. When the court of Hanover county decided in favor of Reverend James Maury, the defendants called on Henry to plead their cause before the jury which was to fix the amount of damages. By appealing to the anti-clerical and even lawless instincts of the jury and by doing it with unmatched oratorical skill, Patrick Henry won the jury to his side and made himself a popular hero in upcountry Virginia.
October 30, 1764. Many Burgesses arrived early for the October December session of the General Assembly "in a flame" over the Act of Parliament proposing a Stamp tax on the American colonists. The committee of correspondence had been busy during the summer communicating with the agent in London, and the Burgesses were ready to take action against the proposed tax.
December 17, 1764. The House of Burgesses and the Council agreed upon an address to the Crown and upon memorials to the House of Commons and to the House of Lords. The three petitions stressed the sufferings such a tax would cause war-weary Virginians and also opposed the levy on constitutional grounds. They argued that the colonial charters and long usage gave the Virginia House of Burgesses the sole right to tax Virginians and that the fundamental constitution of Britain protected a man from being taxed without his consent. These arguments, elaborated and refined, were to be the heart of the colonial contentions in the turbulent days ahead.
May 29, 1765. The arguments of the Virginia Assembly went unheeded. On February 27, 1765, Parliament decreed that the stamp tax should go into effect on November 1. The General Assembly was in session when news of the passage of the Stamp Act came to Virginia, and on May 29 the House went into the committee of the whole to consider what steps it should take. Burgess Patrick Henry presented his famous resolutions which fixed at the outset the tenor of colonial opposition to the stamp tax. The House adopted by a close vote on the 30th five of Henry's seven resolutions, and all seven were given wide circulation throughout the colonies.
October 30, 1765. On the day before the stamp tax was to go into effect, George Mercer, the collector, arrived in Williamsburg with the stamps. Williamsburg was filled with people in town for the meeting of the General Court, and Governor Fauquier had to intervene to protect Mercer from the insults of the mob. On November 1, the courts ceased to function and all public business came to a virtual halt.
February 8, 1766. Foreshadowing the judicial review of a later day, the Northampton county court declared the Stamp Act unconstitutional and consequently of no effect.
March 13, 1766. A number of the inhabitants of the town and environs of Norfolk assembled at the court house and formed the Sons of Liberty. The Sons of Liberty usually appeared hereafter at the forefront of any anti-British agitation in the colonies.
1766. Richard Bland published his famous An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies in which he took a rather advanced constitutional position in opposition to parliamentary taxation of the American colonies.