A delegation of four ministers called on Governor Dinwiddie to urge him to veto the bill. But Dinwiddie, who was begging for funds and troops, had no stomach for a conflict with the Assembly over this affair. "What can I do?" he told them. "If I refuse to approve the act, I shall have the people on my back." So he signed the bill.
Unwilling to let the matter rest here, ten of the ministers, among them the Reverend Patrick Henry, uncle of the statesman, appealed to the Bishop of London. The unjust Two-penny Act would lower them in the eyes of the people, it would discourage them in the discharge of their duty. And, to clinch their argument, they pointed out that their cause was also the cause of the King. "Our salaries have had the royal assent and cannot be taken from us or diminished in any respect by any law made here without trampling upon the royal prerogative."[7]
Three years later, when again there was a "prodigious dimunition" in the tobacco crop, the Assembly acted to give relief to debtors and taxpayers by again making obligations payable in money at tuppence a pound. This time the clergy made no appeal to the Burgesses, but Commissary Dawson, John Camm, and Thomas Robinson went to the Palace to urge Fauquier to veto the bill. Note that it has no suspending clause, they said. Note that it alters a bill to which the King gave his assent. If you let it pass, will you not be ignoring your instructions?[8]
But Fauquier was as much in need of funds as Dinwiddie had been. He answered that that was not the point to be considered. What was important was what would please the people. So he gave the act his approval. "The bill was a temporary law to ease the people from a burden which the country thought too great for them to bear," he wrote the Lords of Trade. "A suspending clause would have been to all intents and purposes the same as rejecting it.... The country were intent upon it ... and I conceived it would be a very strong step for me to take ... to set my face against the whole colony.... I am persuaded that if I had refused it, I must have despaired of our gaining any influence either in the Council or the House of Burgesses."[9]
But the clergy were determined to bring the matter to an issue. Commissary Dawson advised caution, but pressure from other ministers forced him to call a convention. When they met they not only vented their indignation in many denunciations of the Two-penny Act, but drew up an address to the King entitled "The Representation of the Clergy." In it they hammered on the point that their cause was his cause. The act was as injurious to the royal prerogative as to the rights of the Church. "It gives us great concern that an ancient, standing law of this dominion, confirmed by the sanction of the royal assent, is no security to our livings."[10]
This appeal they entrusted to the Reverend John Camm with instructions to place it in the King's hands. Camm, who later became Commissary, President of the College of William and Mary, and a member of the Council, was a man of great ability, but according to Fauquier, turbulent and delighting "to live in a flame." On his arrival in England he obtained an interview with the King and delivered the "Representation." His Majesty referred it to the Privy Council, who, in turn, handed it on to the Board of Trade.
This suited Camm exactly, for his trump card was the Bishop of London, and the Bishop's influence with the Board was great. His Lordship was exasperated at the presumption of the Virginia Assembly. "To make an act to suspend the operations of the royal act is an attempt which in some times would have been called treason, and I do not know any other name for it in our law," he told the Board. "To assume a power to bind the King's hands, and to say how far his power shall go and where it shall stop, is such an act of supremacy as is inconsistent with the dignity of the Crown of England. "It manifestly tended to draw the colonists from their allegiance to the King for them to find that they had a higher power to protect them. "Surely it is time for us to look about us, and to consider the several steps lately taken in the diminution of the prerogative and influence of the Crown."
The Bishop denounced Governor Fauquier for signing the Two-penny bill. "What made him so zealous in this cause I pretend not to judge, but surely the great change which manifestly appears in the temper and disposition of the people of this colony in the compass of a few years deserves highly to be considered, and the more so as the Deputy Governors and the Council seemed to act in concert with the people."[11]
The Board was duly impressed. They denounced the Two-penny Act as a usurpation and advised the King to declare it null and void. Not only did the King do so, but he gave Fauquier a stunning rebuke. "We do ... strictly command and require you for the future, upon pain of our highest displeasure, and of being recalled from the government of our said colony, punctually to observe and obey the several directions contained in the 16th article of our said instructions, relative to the passing of laws...."[12]
Camm sent copies of these papers to Virginia, and when they were handed around among his friends the clergy rejoiced. The King was on their side, all would be well. Camm wrote to his attorney in Virginia to bring suit in the General Court against the vestry of his parish for his salary in tobacco. On the other hand, the people of the colony were highly resentful against the clergy, and especially against the Bishop of London. Colonel Landon Carter and Colonel Richard Bland wrote pamphlets defending the Two-penny Act and denouncing his Lordship. To the Bishop's contention that the act tended to draw the people from their allegiance, it was answered that nothing was more apt to estrange them than to deny them the right to protect themselves from distress. His Lordship had called the act treason. "But were the Assembly to do nothing? This would have been treason indeed. "In case of an eventuality which the Governor's instructions could not provide for, which could bring ruin before relief could come from the throne, it was the duty of the Assembly to deviate from the fixed rules of the constitution. The preservation of the people could not possibly be treason.[13]