Tamihana, a strategist revered as the "kingmaker", expressed the Kīngitanga movement's key concern in a letter to Browne at the close of the First Taranaki War in 1861. He said Waikato tribes had never signed the Treaty of Waitangi and that Māori were a separate nation. "I do not desire to cast the Queen from this island, but from own piece (of land). I am to be the person to overlook my own piece," he wrote. But Browne regarded the Kīngitanga stance as an act of disloyalty; his plans for the invasion of Waikato were fuelled in large part by his desire to uphold "the Queen's supremacy" in the face of the Kīngitanga challenge. Browne's successor, Sir George Grey, told a large Māori gathering at Taupari near the mouth of the Waikato River in December 1861 that the King movement was bad and should be abandoned. On 9 July 1863 Grey issued an ultimatum that all Māori living between Auckland and the Waikato take an oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria or be expelled south of the Waikato River. Troops crossed into Waikato territory three days later to begin their invasion.