VA, USA
Lord Dunmore Flees the Governor's Palace
June 8, 1775
After weeks of rising tension following the Gunpowder Incident, Royal Governor Lord Dunmore abandoned the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg on June 8, 1775, fleeing to the safety of a British warship in the York River. His departure marked the effective end of royal government in Virginia.
Dunmore would continue to wage a limited war from shipboard, issuing his famous proclamation offering freedom to enslaved people who joined the British and conducting raids along the coast. But he never returned to Williamsburg, and the colony's governance passed to the revolutionary conventions that would ultimately produce Virginia's new state constitution.
People Involved
The last royal governor of Virginia, whose seizure of the colony's gunpowder from the Williamsburg magazine in April 1775 provoked an armed confrontation with Patrick Henry's militia. Dunmore's flight from the Governor's Palace marked the effective end of royal authority in Virginia.