8th. That Charles M. Thurston, Isaac Zane, Angus McDonald, Samuel Beall, 3d, Alexander White, and George Rootes, be appointed a Committee for the purposes aforesaid; and that they or any three of them, are hereby fully empowered to act.
Which being read, were unanimously assented to and subscribed.
[This meeting makes no reference to the action of the ex-Burgesses at Williamsburg some ten days before, but probably it originated from that action.]
128. The First Call for a Provincial Convention (Virginia)
a. Suggestion from the Ex-Burgesses (May 30, 1774)
Force, American Archives, Fourth Series, I, p. 351.
The ex-Burgesses, many of them, remained in Williamsburg to attend the state ball on the 30th and for the day of prayer, June 1 (cf. No. 122 c). On the day after the call for a Continental Congress (May 29), letters arrived from committees of correspondence in the northern colonies, as below noted; and the following day, twenty-five of the ex-Burgesses called a meeting of the whole number for August 1, as below. That meeting was expanded into a true representative convention by modifications in the plan indicated in b and c below. Force does not indicate the source of the following statement; but presumably it was printed by order of the meeting in the Williamsburg papers. Such proceedings were ordered printed in almost every case by the various county meetings; but the clause referring to printing is usually omitted in these extracts.
... Immediately upon receipt of these letters the Honorable Peyton Randolph, Esquire, moderator of the Committee of the late House of Representatives, thought it proper to convene all the members that were then in town; who on considering those important papers [suggesting the need of uniform action in the various colonies], came to a resolution to call together several other members near this city, to whom notice could be given. [Twenty-five of them met next day, Monday, May 30, at ten o'clock, when] it was unanimously agreed to refer the further consideration of this matter to the first day of August next; at which time it is expected there will be a very general attendance of the late members of the House....
[This notice is referred to in a letter of June 23 by Richard Henry Lee to Samuel Adams as follows, after describing the meeting of the ex-Burgesses on May 27—No. 125, e.] ... "Most of the members, myself among the rest, had left Williamsburg before your message from Boston arrived. Twenty-five of them, however, were assembled to consider that message, and they determined to invite a general meeting of the whole body on the first of August." (Force, Fourth Series, I, 446.)
[Presumably the committee of correspondence sent out a circular letter to the various counties. The editor of this volume has not been able to find any such letter, but some of the documents just following assume such action. After June 1, the remaining ex-Burgesses at Williamsburg departed home, in order to arouse their respective counties to appoint delegates for the August convention.]