Places as well as persons can be actors and mediators of a political crisis. In the last week of May, 1774, the usually quiet, and sparsely populated provincial capital of Williamsburg was swollen by the prominent planters from throughout Virginia who had come to attend an important session of the House of Burgesses. When Governor Dunmore dissolved the House in response to its resolution making June 1, 1774 “a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer,” it was not difficult for the leadership of the House to convene a meeting of the majority of the members (89 of 122) five hundred yards down Duke of Glouchester Street in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern. When, two days later, a letter containing urgent communications from Whig committees in Boston, Philadelphia and Annapolis was delivered at the mansion of Speaker Payton Randolph, the intimacy of the town made it possible for him to gather 25 members still in town to an emergency meeting at his house. (It is the long building on Nochelson Street, on the north side of Market Square.)