It was placed under the command of Captain Robert Dennis; and Thomas Stegge, Richard Bennett, and William Claiborne, members of Berkeley's council, were joined with him in a commission[35] to "use their best endeavors to reduce all the plantations within the Bay of Chesopiack." Bennett and Claiborne were in Virginia at the time, and probably did not know of their appointment till the ships arrived in Virginia.
The fleet left England in October, 1651, carrying six hundred men, but on the way Captain Dennis and Captain Stegge were lost in a storm and the command devolved on Captain Edmund Curtis.[36] In December they reached the West Indies, where they assisted Sir George Ayscue in the reduction of Barbadoes.

In January, 1652, they reached Virginia, where Curtis showed Claiborne and Bennett his duplicate instructions.
Berkeley, full of fight, called out the militia, twelve hundred strong, and engaged the assistance of a few Dutch ships then trading in James River contrary to the recent navigation act.
The commissioners acted with prudence and good sense.

They did not proceed at once to Jamestown, but first issued a proclamation intended to disabuse the people of any idea that they came to make war.[37] The result was that in March, 1652, when they appeared before the little capital, the council and burgesses overruled Berkeley, and entered into an agreement with Curtis, Claiborne, and Bennett, which proves the absence of hard feelings on both sides.

The Virginians recognized the authority of the commonwealth of England, and promised to pass no statute contrary to the laws of Parliament.

On the other hand, the commissioners acknowledged the submission of Virginia, "as a voluntary act not forced nor constrained by a conquest upon the countrey"; and conceded her right "to be free from all taxes, customs, and impositions whatever, not enforced by the General Assembly." In particular it was stipulated that "Virginia should have and enjoy the antient bounds and lymitts granted by the charters of the former kings." The articles were signed March 12, 1652, and the commissioners soon after sailed to St.Mary's and received the surrender of Maryland.
They returned in time to be present at a new meeting of the assembly held at Jamestown in April, at which it was unanimously voted that until the further pleasure of Parliament was known Richard Bennett should be governor and William Claiborne secretary of state.