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The House of Burgesses had its origins in the so-called Great Charter, issued in 1618 by the Virginia Company of London. The arrangement allowed the Virginia Company to retain corporate control over the region while giving the colonists some measure of self-government. In the summer of 1619, Virginia’s newly appointed governor, Sir George Yeardley, called for the selection of two burgesses, or representatives, from each of the colony’s eleven settlements to meet at Jamestown as the first General Assembly of Virginia. Only John Pory, whom Yeardley named speaker of the assembly, had served in Parliament; the others were inexperienced, but had some knowledge of English government and quickly became aware of their own power. After Bacon’s Rebellion, the king and his younger brother, James, the Duke of York (later King James II), began to impose stricter regulation on the colonies, specifically targeting the freedom of action exercised by colonial assemblies like the House of Burgesses. Over the next twenty-five years the Crown sent a succession of governors to Virginia with instructions to limit the power of the assemblies.
Virginia House of Burgesses: Purpose, Facts, and Significance
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These two houses would become more well-defined and autonomous over the years and served as the nexus for opposition to British rule by the colonies in the late 18th century CE. With its origin in the first meeting of the Virginia General Assembly at Jamestown in July 1619, the House of Burgesses was the first democratically-elected legislative body in the British American colonies. About 140 years later, when Washington was elected, the electorate was made up of male landholders. The burgesses adopted resolutions against the Stamp Act and protested the unprecedented taxes by petitioning both houses of Parliament and the king, becoming the defenders of the people of Virginia in the process. The Stamp Act Resolves that burgess Patrick Henry introduced in 1765 and the speech he made criticizing King George III for signing the Stamp Act verged on treason, but set the terms of colonial resistance to British policies for the next decade.
Slavery and the House of Burgesses in Jamestown
English landowners had insisted on meeting with their leaders for consultation in local matters ever since the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. The House of Burgesses was dissolved on May 24, 1774, by the Royal Governor John Murray, Earl of Dunmore. Following the passage of the Intolerable Acts, the Burgesses passed a resolution for a Day of Feasting and Prayer in support of the city of Boston. Some scholars (Price among them) question whether these first Africans were treated as slaves and argue they were considered more along the lines of indentured servants. Evidence does suggest the presence of free blacks in colonial Jamestown and certainly, by 1676 CE, there were black landowners and at least one on record as owning black slaves himself.
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In both cases, their agents enjoyed enough success to result in a compromise that reflected the House’s agenda. Thereafter, the House of Burgesses paid the salary and expenses of an agent in London, just as the governor’s Council did. In 1691 the assembly created an office of treasurer of the colony to collect and disburse the tax money raised under its authority.
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That June, under threat of violence from Bacon, the assembly voted to create a 1,000-man army with Bacon as commanding general. Charles II later ordered all of the session’s laws repealed because he believed (incorrectly) that Bacon had forced them on the assembly. In March 1643 Wyatt’s successor, Governor Sir William Berkeley, authorized the burgesses to sit apart from the Council members as a separate chamber in a bicameral assembly.
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Because the state constitution required that all bills originate in the House (permitting the Senate only to propose amendments), the lion’s share of political power in Virginia was lodged for the next seventy-five years in the House of Delegates. In May 1774, after Parliament closed Boston Harbor as punishment for the Boston Tea Party and the House of Burgesses adopted resolutions in support of the Boston colonists, Virginia’s royal governor, John Murray, earl of Dunmore, dissolved the assembly. The burgesses then reassembled on their own and issued the calls for the first of five Virginia Conventions. These conventions were essentially meetings of the House of Burgesses without the governor and Council. They paved the way for the First Continental Congress and, more broadly, for the revolution in Virginia, creating an army and, in June 1776, adopting a new constitution for the independent Commonwealth of Virginia. In the mid-eighteenth century the House of Burgesses reemerged as the most influential branch of the colony’s government.
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During the early 1600s, Jamestown, a small British colony, was facing hardships due to poor economic conditions and cumbersome military law under Sir Thomas Dale―the appointed marshal of Virginia colony. In order to save its investments and enhance the colony conditions, the Virginia Company of London set up developmental reforms to attract people to the settlement. In Jamestown, Virginia, the first elected legislative assembly in the New World—the House of Burgesses—convenes in the choir of the town’s church. During the Stamp Act Crisis in 1765, the House of Burgesses played a critical role in opposing the British government’s attempt to enforce the Stamp Act. Patrick Henry introduced a series of resolutions known as the Stamp Act Resolves, which argued that only the General Assembly had the authority to levy taxes on Virginia colonists.
A formidable group of councillors led by William Claiborne and Samuel Mathews (1572–1657) appeared to stand in his way, and Berkeley’s reform of the assembly into a bicameral body offered him a chance to ally himself and the colony’s planters against Claiborne and Mathews. At this time the House of Burgesses gave itself parliamentary privileges to protect its integrity and its members. By the middle of the seventeenth century the General Assembly had developed into a colonial counterpart of Parliament. The provisions of the charter included an organization of self-government by the colonists along with selected representatives to regulate in the legislative assembly. This agreement gave the colonists the freedom of passing their own set of laws under the corporate control of the Virginia Company.
“When you come in now, it feels nice, bright, and big, even though it’s still a galley kitchen,” she shares. Resale value was definitely on the designer’s mind throughout the renovation (the couple recently sold the house), so investing in curb appeal was a big part of the journey from the get-go. She expanded the front porch with stone and wood steps, gave the front door a fresh paint color, and took out the fussy tree that was inconveniently positioned directly in front of a window. Inside, she set out to refurbish and “clean up” as much as possible without making a ton of structural changes to help stay on budget—adding central air-conditioning, though, was a must. The first legislature among the English colonies in America was established in Virginia on July 30, 1619, and was known as the House of Burgesses.
Thus, the assembly of these elected colonists came to be known as the ‘House of Burgesses’. With the governor now being a crown appointee, members of the House of Burgesses lost political power. Further, suspicion grew that as royal governors appointed burgesses to important posts, this would unfairly influence the activities of the House. The House attempted to pass legislation to enact a sort of checks and balances, whereby a Burgess appointed to an additional post by a royal governor was required to resign as burgess. Throughout the 18th century, the House continued to meet, and began to see itself as a Parliamentary equivalent in Virginia.
The first law passed by the assembly during its first session was the regulation on the tobacco price to three shillings per pound. During the next six-day session laws were created on bans against gambling, drunkenness, idleness, and Sabbath observance was made compulsory. The new system provided for local governments as well as a general assembly for the whole colony. Virginia 's House of Burgesses was the first representative assembly in North America. It was created by Governor George Yeardley (c. 1587–1627) under instructions from the Virginia Company of London, which owned the colony of Virginia. In hope of attracting more immigrants to its colony, the company replaced a form of martial law used by the colony's previous governor with English common law.
Meeting in Williamsburg with elder statesmen such as John Robinson, Peyton Randolph, and George Wythe, as well as newer burgesses such as George Mason, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson, Washington learned to navigate political spheres and began his lessons in statecraft. In 2019, Virginia celebrated the 400th anniversary of the first representative legislative assembly in North America. While the idea of representation has continued to be redefined over the course of America’s experiment in democracy, it is important to understand the origins of democratic assembly in the United States, and its birth in the Virginia House of Burgesses.
Our ongoing mission is to provide teachers, students, and anyone interested in American History with entries, articles, primary documents, videos, and images that provide a solid understanding of the growth and development of the United States. We offer historical research services, along with website design, development, and planning for regional, state, and historical encyclopedias. The Virginia House of Burgesses was established in 1619 as the first representative government in the British Colonies in North America. Many of the Founding Fathers, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, were members of the House of Burgesses and instrumental in establishing its successor, the General Assembly, comprised of a Senate and a House of Delegates in 1776 CE. A number of scholars in the modern era have argued for the claim that the House of Burgesses, which informed the creation of the United States government, was directly influenced by Native American forms of government, but this claim is consistently challenged.
This convention also made allowances for the establishment of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and a state constitution. The new Virginia state constitution, ratified in 1776, nullified Virginia’s previous colonial-era government, including the House of Burgesses. It create a bicameral state legislature, allowing for citizens to elect members to a Senate and a House of Delegates. The June 1676 session of the House of Burgesses played a critical part in Bacon’s Rebellion (1676–1677), an uprising against Berkeley’s response to Indian attacks on the northern and western frontiers. Berkeley had removed Nathaniel Bacon, the rebellion’s leader, from the governor’s Council in May, but after Bacon was elected to the House of Burgesses from Henrico County, the governor reinstated him as councillor.
The House of Burgesses was a superior school for statesmen, not only for those serving Virginia, but also for those serving the new United States. Peyton Randolph, the House of Burgesses’s last speaker, was the first president of the Continental Congress, and many of the Virginia representatives to Congress had experience as burgesses. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and other great revolutionary leaders of Virginia served first in the House of Burgesses, where they learned the skills that enabled them to lead in founding the new nation. A democratic form of government had been established in North America over a thousand years before the first English colonist set foot on the land.
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