On September 27, 1774, more than a thousand patriots gathered at the Barnstable County courthouse and wrested control of Cape Cod from the British without a shot fired after Parliament had scrapped the Massachusetts Bay colony's ancient charter in response to the Boston Tea Party. When chief justice Col. James Otis ordered the crowd to disperse in his Majesty's name, Nathaniel Freeman, the protest's elected leader, answered that they would continue to perform their duty, and the protesters stood fast until Otis and other county officials formally agreed to ignore Parliament's new rules and continue honoring the colony's long-standing democratic government. Similar protests spread across Massachusetts that summer and fall, and by the end of 1774 all of the colony except Boston was free of British control, helping lead Gen. Thomas Gage to send troops to Concord the following April, where the Battle of Lexington and Concord ignited the Revolutionary War. Massachusetts had thus won its own independence nearly two years before the united colonies declared independence from Great Britain in July 1776. After Cape Cod outgrew the small courthouse, a Baptist congregation bought it in 1842 and converted it into a church, the building was expanded in 1905 into its present form, and after the church disbanded in 1972, Tales of Cape Cod bought it to preserve an important piece of Cape Cod and American history.