showed his real sentiment. He
demanded the complete submission of the Regulators, called out fifteen
hundred armed men, and was said to intend to rouse the Indians to cut
off the men of Orange County as rebels.

In spite of this threatening attitude of the governor, Husbands was
acquitted on every charge, and Fanning was found guilty on six separate
indictments. There was also a verdict given against three Regulators.
This was the decision of the jury alone. That of the judges showed a
different spirit. They punished Fanning by fining him one penny on each
charge, while the Regulators were each sentenced to fifty pounds fine
and six months' imprisonment. To support this one-sided justice Tryon
threatened the Regulators with fire and sword, and they remained quietly
at home, brooding moodily over their failure but hesitating to act.

We must now go on to the year 1770. The old troubles had
continued,--illegal fees and taxes, peculation and robbery. The
sheriffs and tax-collectors were known to have embezzled over fifty
thousand pounds. The costs of suits at law had so increased that justice
lay beyond the reach of the poor. And back of all this reigned Governor
Tryon in his palace, supporting the spoilers of the people. So incensed
did they become that at the September court, finding that their cases
were to be ignored, they seized Fanning and another lawyer and beat them
soundly with cowhide whips, ending by a destructive raid on Fanning's
house.

The Assembly met in December. It had been chosen under a state of
general alarm. The Regulators elected many representatives, among them
the persecuted Herman Husbands, who was chosen to represent Orange
County. This defiant action of the people roused the "Great Wolf" again.
Husbands had been acquitted of everything charged against him, yet Tryon
had him voted a disturber of the peace and expelled from the House, and
immediately afterward had him arrested and put in prison without bail,
though there was not a grain of evidence against him.

The governor followed this act of violence with a "Riot Act" of the most
oppressive and illegal character. Under it if any ten men assembled and
did not disperse when ordered to do so, they were to be held guilty of
felony. For a riot committed either before or after this act was
published any persons accused might be tried before the Superior Court,
no matter how far it was from their homes, and if they did not appear
within sixty da