The First Meeting of Virginia’s House of Burgesses, 1619: 400 Years of Democracy in America
This week marks the anniversary of a momentous occasion in American History. 400 years ago, the Virginia House of Burgesses convened in Jamestown from July 30th to August 4th as the first democratically elected representative body in the Western Hemisphere. 1619 was a year of major transformation in Virginia in more ways than one. The colony’s sponsors took several important steps evolving away from a small outpost into a stable, full-fledged colony. In addition to founding the House of Burgesses, the Virginia Company granted individual colonists the right to own private property and finally began sending women to the overwhelmingly male colony to begin building families. Ominously, 1619 also saw the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia, foretelling one of America’s most troubling legacies: slavery. We will highlight all these developments over the rest of the year (the first Africans arrived in August and women in November). Today though we will focus on the founding of the House of Burgesses which marks one of the great achievements in US History, the birth of republican democracy in America.
Over the 16th century, Spain made a fortune exploring and subjugating Caribbean, Central and South American native cultures. Spanish conquistadors found vast quantities of gold, silver and developed sugar plantations (sugar grew into the most profitable of these ventures over time). Soon treasure fleets carried riches generated by New World mines and plantations back to Spain. Sea faring nations, England, France, and Holland, began sending explorers to North America seeking their own fortunes where Spain had not yet established a foothold.
England succeeded first. Breaking away from the Catholic Church under the reign of Henry VIII, England became increasingly antagonistic with Catholic Spain throughout the 1500s culminating in the great English victory against the Spanish Armada in 1588. English investors created the Virginia Company (hereinafter the “Company”) and founded Jamestown on the James River in Virginia in 1607. The first adventurers prioritized finding precious metals and direct water passage to the Far East. Twelve years later, neither goal was realized and the fate of Virginia was uncertain (for more on the founding of Jamestown, please see: The Travails of Founding Jamestown).
In those first dozen years the colonists lived under the constant threat of attack from Native American tribes on the Chesapeake Bay. The Company sent soldiers led by veteran officers from the hostile colonization of Ireland and other European conflicts. Men like John Smith, Lord De La Warr, Sir Thomas Gates and Sir Thomas Dale not only led military expeditions, they oversaw civil life serving as governors. Implementing a harsh martial law, these governor-generals stabilized Virginia with a strictly enforced legal code, Lawes Divine, Morall and Martial. Raiding Indian villages inflicted enough mayhem to force a truce that temporarily ended the outright warfare.
New settlements with better land and water sources appeared further up the James. After several abortive initiatives to generate revenue, the colony stumbled upon a solution that promised economic viability. Beginning in 1614, growing tobacco proved profitable. Both production and price grew rapidly thanks to a healthy demand for the “noxious weed” in England. Countless acres of fertile acreage in Virginia held out hope for turning profits if more settlers could be brought over the Atlantic Ocean.
Years of war with Virginia’s Native American tribes and constant shortages of food and essentials resulted in a high death toll, low morale and stories of miserable conditions in Mother England that made recruitment of new settlers nearly impossible. By 1618, the situation in Virginia had deteriorated on a number of fronts.
Governor Sir Thomas Argall’s administration (1616-1618) proved the final straw. He was autocratic and played favorites with some settlers over others. By 1618, loud complaints over Argall’s leadership reached England. Martial law ensured survival but failed to bring about a thriving colony. The myriad difficulties created divisions among the Company’s directors over administration and long-term goals. Clearly changes needed to be made to improve the colony’s odds of survival. A faction led the by Sir Edwin Sandys (pronounced “Sands”) used complaints about Argall to seize the reins with new ideas and goals.
The Theory of Commonwealth
Sandys’ rise came at a providential moment for Virginia’s colonists. The son of a prominent arch bishop of York, Sandys received a thorough education at Oxford steeped in classical Greek and Roman history and Renaissance humanism. Sandys began his first term in Parliament in 1603 emerging as a leading opponent of unfettered royal power. His education and political experience informed Sandys’ views on reforming colonial government.
Men like Sandys were well versed in an emerging political theory: commonwealth or common weal. The concept grew out of Renaissance humanism emphasizing the creation of a “godly and equitable society” emphasizing “wise and noble rulers and mixed government.” [1] The ruling coalition consisted of monarchy, aristocracy, and property owners who formulated laws via a limited democracy fortified by Christian values. The king held a special divine role as pater patriae to his people empowered “to protect his subjects in their lives, properties and laws.” Though appointed by God, the king’s authority came through “delegation of power from the people; and he ha[d] no just claim to any other power but this.’” [2] “Parliament was ‘the most high and absolute power of the realm of England’ where the people were ‘collected together and united by common accord.’ . . . to consider what is good and necessary for the common wealth.’” [3] Together, these elements of society shared power with the king responsible for foreign policy, administration of colonies, and enforcement of laws.
Parliament retained the power to pass laws for England at large in the domestic realm and held the purse strings—all the king’s expenditures had to be approved by Parliament. Political commentators of the day still endorsed a hierarchical society. The noble born were the natural choice to lead. They were better educated, more temperate and better prepared to administer a society as wise and just leaders. Thus, English supporters of commonwealth theory were not advocating an egalitarian society. However, they were expanding participation and advocating basic rights for a larger portion of the population.
Students of political philosophy will recognize commonwealth principles as precursors to Enlightenment ideals developing and evolving later in the 17th and 18th centuries in the writings of the likes of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers who provided much of the intellectual basis for America’s Founders in fomenting the American Revolution and drafting of the Constitution nearly 200 years later. Commonwealth provisions set down in Virginia in 1619 laid the foundation.
Importantly, this combination of king and parliament provided legitimacy as multiple parties with differing interests participated in passing laws. Participation implied consent to the government because the governed could express and protect their interests. If one or more laws were too repressive, those adversely affected had a peaceful recourse through future repeal. Thus, the people as a whole would be more likely to accept laws with which they disagreed since they had a voice in lawmaking and a method of protest and remedy: “No man could justly complain if he disagreed with the decisions taken ‘but must accommodate himself to find it good and obey it’” [4]
Bringing the Commonwealth to Virginia
Sandys intended to make Virginia more than just an investment. Treating the colony as only an asset to be exploited for profit had failed. Sandys led a faction with a broader vision of remaking Virginia into an economically diverse society built on English concepts of commonwealth. To promote England’s standing in the Old World, the New World could provide products a small island nation had to import from continental Europe and cheap raw materials to grow England’s domestic economy. To further this end, he enacted several reforms designed to bring improve conditions and in the process entice new settlers.
Until 1618, the Company retained ownership of the land and colonists worked under communal conditions, not as individual landowning farmers. Communal work did not sit well with the colonists and they shirked their responsibilities as much as possible. In the same year Rolfe introduced tobacco, Governor Dale authorized 90 individuals to settle on small parcels of land they could work for their own sustenance. As long as these farmers grew 2-3 acres of corn, they could plant as much tobacco they desired. Once properly incentivized, production increased significantly on those select farms with “three men . . . producing as much as thirty had previously.” [5]
Taking notice of the effectiveness of Dale’s experiment, Sandys granted 50 acres to every settler who had lived in the colony for at least two years and offered 50 acres to every person willing to pay their passage. Additionally, anyone who transported an indentured servant to the New World received another 50 acres (the Headright System). In pre-Industrial Revolution Europe, property was wealth, especially in a small island nation like England.
Introducing private property rights to Virginia was a novel concept in English law. In feudal times, the king legally owned all the land and distributed territories to nobles as a method of reward and ensuring loyalty. Nobles used land to generate wealth but owed duties in the form of taxes and soldiers in time of war. Nobles in turn leased land to freemen to work in exchange for rent and a separate set of duties. Though feudalism had ended over a century earlier, real estate ownership was still strictly regulated in the 1600s and for all practical purposes remained in the hands of a few. Offering property was a significant incentive for many who had no hope of ever owning their own land in England while giving existing colonists a stake in building and improving the colony.
Second, the Company began recruiting women opening an avenue for starting a family to the overwhelmingly male population in Virginia. The introduction of families promised to bring about civilizing and stabilizing effect on the colony. The first female settlers began arriving in November and will be covered in a later post.
Third, Sandys ended the unpopular martial governance, including recalling Argall and appointing Sir George Yeardley as governor. The latter was well regarded by the colonists for his brief and effective term as a temporary colonial governor. Yeardley would arrive in Virginia with a new social compact and instructions to transform Virginia favorably for the colonists. Sandys’ compact, the Greate Charter, authorized a representative assembly giving colonists a hand in self-governance. Each plantation or locality would elect two representatives (burgesses) to appear annually in Jamestown. The assembly included the governor and a council of six leading men selected by the governor. In the old system, the council was advisory only and served at the whim of the governor who held a monopoly on setting law. Now instead of an all-powerful governor, Yeardley would be a “first among equals.” Council members were appointed by the governor but then held a lifetime term which limited the governor’s influence. Each assemblyman, council member and the governor had a vote and decisions were made by majority rule. Only in the case of deadlock did the governor’s vote have extra weight to break a tie. The new assembly combining the crown with aristocracy and property owners to make laws and govern reflected hierarchical commonwealth values.
One of the most radical elements of the Greate Charter mandated voting rights for all freeholders and freemen, a significant broadening of suffrage over English tradition. Freemen worked as tenants or as laborers for freeholders (property owners). The Charter gave freemen the vote, something they did not have in England (or in any other European nation at the time). The House of Burgesses was not a full-fledged legislative body, proposed laws still had to be approved in London, but the assembly offered colonists participation in law making they had not previously enjoyed.
In addition to broader politicl participation, the Charter introduced two other important commonwealth concepts in Virginia, the rule of law and consent of the governed. Instead of the arbitrary dictates of an omnipotent governor, the assembly operated under the rule of law. “These laws are not to be chested or hidden like a candle under a bushel, but in the form of the Magna Charta to be published to the whole colony, to the end that every person though never so mean, may both for his own right challenge it and in case he may be at any time wronged, though by the best in the country, he may have law to allege for his speedy remedy.” [6] In other words, every person shall have the same rights, clearly explained and published widely so they were well known to all. Every person, no matter their station had recourse to assert and protect their rights.
The reference to the Magna Carta was not coincidental. Englishmen looked to the Magna Carta as the ancient source of their individual rights. The Greate Charter would serve as Virginia’s Magna Carta, a powerful incentive to draw landless settlers in England with economic opportunities and political participation they could not attain at home with the promise they would enjoy the same rights as propertied element in England.
Introducing a representative assembly also increased the legitimacy of the new government via consent of the governed. A broad swath of colonists would have the right to vote and have a voice in government. Elected officials would need the support of freemen to enter and remain in office and thus would have to listen to their constituents. The ability to participate lessened the chance freemen would be ignored and therefore lessened the likelihood of revolt.
Putting Theory into Practice
Yeardley arrived in Virginia on April 18, 1619 a breeze of fresh air for colonists with much to do. He issued a proclamation quoting the contents of the Greate Charter “for the better establishing of a Commonwealth heere wherein order was taken for the removinge of all grievances which formerly were suffered &&, and farther that free liberty was given to all men to make choice of their dividents of land, and as their abilities means would permit to possesse and plant upon them. And that they might have a hand in the governinge of themselves it was granted that a general Assemblie should be yearly once whereat were to be present the Governor and Councill with two Burgesses from each plantation freely to be elected by the inhabitants thereof—this Assemblie to have the power to make and ordaine whatsoever laws and orders should by them be thought good and proffitable for our subsistence.” [7]
Yeardley began fulfilling the terms of the Charter issuing property grants. He then divided Virginia into four boroughs (also known as citties or incorporations): James Cittie, Elizabeth Cittie, Charles Cittie, and Henrico. Each borough would elect its own governing council and be subject to the new assembly. The local council oversaw public lands, encouraging agricultural and economic schemes, maintained a census including marriages, births and deaths. Yeardley also established local courts for petty matters, maintenance of voting records, and land records. Pursuant to the terms of the Charter, the governor’s council would sit as an appellate court (General Court). Last, he appointed his six councilors, all prominent men of the colony and called for elections of representatives from Virginia’s 12 settlements to the new assembly, soon to be known as the House of Burgesses.
Twenty two Burgesses, six council members and Governor Yeardley convened on July 30, 1619 in the choir of the church at Jamestown as the House of Burgesses. Yeardley sat in a green velvet chair in the choir with a guard of Halberdiers “dressed in the Governor’s livery.” Trumpet creeper and white honeysuckle, clematis and sweetbriar, swamp roses and lilies . . . . kept passing sweet and trimmed up with divers flowers” decorated the church heralding a new beginning in Virginia. [8]
From the beginning the House sought to establish legislative procedures based on England’s Parliament. Yeardley probably selected the assembly’s officers beforehand: John Pory as Speaker of the House, John Twine, Clerk, and Thomas Pierce as Sergeant of Arms. Pory was a natural choice as speaker due to his previous service in Parliament from 1605-1611. His experience proved invaluable in shepherding the assembly through the mundane steps to be followed in debate, passage of laws and formulation of petitions.
The Burgesses insisted on opening proceedings with a prayer: “But for as muche as mens affaires doe little prosper where Gods service is neglected; all Burgesses took their places in the Quire, till a Prayer was said by Mr. [Richard] Bucke, the Minister, that it would please God to guide us & sanctifie all our proceedings to his owne glory, and the good of this Plantation, Prayer being ended, to the intente that as wee had begun at God Almighty foe we might proceed wth awful and due respecte towards his Lieutenant, our most gratious & dread Soveraigne.” [9] Opening with a prayer, the Virginians established a tradition that has continued in the Virginia General Assembly and virtually every other federal, state and local political entity to this day.
After completing the prayer, Yeardley and the council kept their places in the choir while the Burgesses moved to church pews where they took an “oathe of Supremacy.” The House first took up the matter of whether to seat Captain John Warde, elected from a plantation that he settled without the sanction of the Company. In considering the matter, the assembly took into account Warde’s valuable contributions and importance to the continued success of the colony. They agreed to seat him on the promise he would petition the Company for recognition as a bona fide colonist. The Burgesses relied on open ended language instructing Yeardley to call “two Burgesses from each Plantation” to participate in proceedings to seat Warde. The House interpreted the instructions expansively to its advantage. They wanted to include an important and useful colonist, properly sanctioned or not.
On the next matter, the assembly took the opposite course. John Martin founded a large plantation, Martin’s Hundred, receiving a favorable patent that exempted him from laws applying to the rest of the colony. Yeardley and the Burgesses recognized that if the assembly was to be effective, it would require prerogative over all colonists. Accordingly, the House voted to exclude two representatives from Martin’s Hundred unless Martin would agree to submit his plantation to the authority of the House of Burgesses. With its first two actions, the House of Burgesses demonstrated its independence and authority acting in the interests of the colony over any other consideration.
The Burgesses had more business with Martin. Shortly after his arrival, Yeardley received a complaint from Powhatan chieftain Opechancanough (pronounced Ope-ko-canoe) after some of Martin’s men took a shallop (small sailing vessel) into the Chesapeake Bay to trade. They waylaid a canoe of Indians encountered in the bay. Martin’s men forced the natives to turn over corn in their canoe in exchange for beads and some copper.
When Martin came before the Burgesses to answer for his men. The assembly required Martin to promise he and his plantation’s inhabitants would not replicate their coerced trading activities with Indians in the future. They further required him to post a bond before trading with Native Americans. Even though they could not compel Martin to submit to colonial laws, the assembly still exerted its authority in requiring Martin to submit to the colony’s trading policies.
Next, Yeardley read the provisions of the Greate Charter and his instructions to the assemblage. He then divided the Burgesses into committees to review the guiding documents and formulate laws. Introducing committees followed parliamentary practice reflecting Pory’s influence, a practice still followed in modern American governance on the state and federal level. The Burgesses reviewed laws passed before 1618 to determine which should be retained. They also followed Sandys’ instructions authorizing “this Assemblie to have the power to make and ordaine whatsoever laws and orders should by them be thought good and proffitable for our subsistence.” [10]
The Burgesses emerged from their committees with a series of practical laws that addressed important colonial concerns. Tobacco was the backbone of the economy and not surprisingly, the first law set a uniform price. A criminal code followed mandating church attendance, setting dress requirements for church and other public places, and banning drunkenness, gambling, theft, adultery/extramarital relations, swearing and other moral offenses.
Addressing other practical matters and Company prerogatives, the House required all heads of households to maintain stores of food to prevent a recurrence of the Starving Time. Contracts and relations between masters and indentured servants were codified.
Large tobacco plantations were lucrative but did little to advance England’s quest for international prominence. In keeping with Sandys’ instructions to diversify the economy, new laws mandated the growing of mulberry trees (silk production), flax, hemp and grapevines for wine. Longer term plans called for development of forestry/timber, glass making, iron and copper industries. The assembly established requirements for growing flax, hemp, grapevines and other crops to comply with the Company’s desire to diversify the colonial economy.
Religion and Native American relations were a high priority. The Sandys faction advocated changing course with Native Americans. Instead of coercing and fighting local Native American tribes, the English would make serious attempts to convert the Indians coax them into merging with the English into one society. The House gave Yeardley oversight over all trade and other interactions with Native Americans with an eye towards peaceful interaction leading to conversion to Christianity. They specifically banned any act which might endanger relations with the Powhatan, Chickahominy and other tribes: “noe injury or oppression be wrought by the English agst the Indians whereby the present peace might be disturbed, & ancient quarrels might be revived.” [11]
Additionally the Burgesses called for the creation of a “colledge” to educate Indian children in European Christian ways. They also authorized converted Indians to live in English settlements. The provisions demonstrate a combination of the idealistic hopes of the Company’s directors in London and colonial wariness. The new law allowed only five or six Indians per settlement to remain only “so long as they hunt deer, fish, beat corn and/or [engage in] other productive labor . . . . “The Indians shall be kept under guard at night in a separate house . . . and by no meanes to entertaine them. . . . for generally (though some amongst them may proove good) they are a most trecherous people & quickly gone when they have done a villainy.” [12] This last comment from Pory’s report was most likely an explanation of the Burgesses’ caution, their law still had to be approved in London. As further evidence of distrust, another law banned colonists from trading firearms mandating the death sentence for violations of the law.
Not surprisingly, the burgesses elevated the Church of England as the official denomination of the colony. Sandys did not address religious freedom though he made no provision to repress other denominations. The British were themselves Protestant and generally more tolerant of Protestant denominations than some Europeans by the 1600s. However, religious freedom was a concept Americans themselves would develop in the coming century.
Finally, the House debated and drafted six petitions to be sent to England for approval. They asked that John Martin’s patent be altered or reinterpreted to make him subject to the assembly’s laws. Seeking to enhance colonial property rights, another petition requested clarification on the governor’s power to grant land. A third petition pled for inheritance rights from landowner to offspring. Inheritance laws were key to private property rights and to the colony’s survival. If land escheated back to the Company at a landowner’s death, his family would be left destitute. For true property ownership, the owner had to be able to alienate his land as he saw fit including leaving it to his heirs.
On August 2nd, one Burgess, Walter Shelley died and by the 4th, Governor Yeardley and other representatives felt ill (Christopher Lawne died within days of returning home). The House abruptly concluded its proceedings citing “the intemperature of the weather and the falling sick of diverse of the Burgesses.” Pory closed the report on proceedings asking the Company to “give us power to allowe or disallowe of [Company laws made in England], as his Majesty hath given them power to allowe or to reject our lawes.” [13] This last petition sought more authority for the Burgesses to reject laws passed by the Company. The matter would be rendered moot when King Charles I revoked the Company’s charter in 1624 converting Virginia to a royal colony. Nevertheless, Virginians were already making efforts to assert strengthen their hand in self-governance and permanently secure their rights.
Significance and Perspective
The House of Burgesses continued to meet throughout the 17th and 18th century becoming British-America’s first bi-cameral body in 1643 when the Governor’s Council became a separate upper house. With independence, the House of Burgesses became the House of Delegates in Virginia’s bi-cameral General Assembly. Thus, the House of Burgesses/Virginia House of Delegates holds the distinction of being the first and oldest democratically elected republican body in the Western Hemisphere.
Reflecting on this first session, several observations come to mind. It is important to put events of the past into perspective. Today a disturbing trend has arisen where we measure past events and historical figures by our own contemporary standards. This approach is exceedingly unfair and tends to distort history. People of the past were born into a world with pre-existing conditions and values beyond their control. They had to grapple with the circumstances in which they found themselves. We should consider historical events and actors within their times and places not according to modern moral ideals and standards.
In analyzing the first session we must compare it to prevailing conditions of the day. In that context, the House of Burgesses was a unique experiment in commonwealth theory. Sir Edwin Sandys is virtually unknown to Americans today but he made significant contributions to modern American political and legal philosophy. He lived under a king in a time when the vast majority of human beings across the world had no role in their own governance, enjoyed few rights and had virtually no hope of improving their condition. Sandys was a man of rare vision for his day and he implemented a program of reforms to address these difficult conditions.
Sandys fundamentally changed Virginia’s culture away from an unrestrained, arbitrary governor to the rule of law. The Greate Charter granted freeholders the right to vote, a rarity at the time. Allowing landless freemen equal participation with the well born and large planters was unprecedented in 1619, even in the comparatively liberal England. Giving a broad cross section of the population the vote ensured laws passed would reflect the interests of the entire colony, not just an elite few. Laws were made widely available so the populace would know what their rights and obligations were, when those rights were being abridged and provided means to protect their rights through the courts, the vote and petitions to the House of Burgesses.
Local representative government, widespread political participation and the rule of law and gave the House of Burgesses legitimacy throughout Virginia, something autocratic governors could not sustain. The legitimacy translated into one of the important features of commonwealth theory, consent of the governed. Over time Virginians came to see the House of Burgesses as an authoritative protector of their rights. By the time of the Revolution, the House contained most of the leaders who would bring about independence.
Broad private property rights for a large segment of the population was also novel in the 17th century world. English law provided significant protections for property rights but those laws were designed to protect the interests of a few landholders. In Virginia, those protections extended to a much larger segment of the population. Coupled with the political reforms, property rights gave Virginia’s colonists a stable platform to build a more egalitarian community. These reforms remain central pillars of American jurisprudence levelling the playing field for all, even today.
We should not gloss over the negative either. The colony still faced trauma and difficulty that affected its development after 1619. The uneasy truce with Native Americans would not last. In 1622, Powhatan Chief Opechancanough launched a massive attack intended to oust the English. He nearly succeeded killing from a quarter to a third of the European population. Periodic fighting continued until the English finally ended the coastal Native American threat once and for all in 1644. Instead of incorporating Native Americans into English society or respecting their rights, the English largely annihilated them.
Tensions over expansion, large planters’ excess of influence, indentured servants’ rights other issues led to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. By the time Nathaniel Bacon died in the midst of his rebellion, Sandys’ vision of a diversified economy based on small landholders had seemingly failed. The assembly was intended to limit power of the large planters in part through a diversified economy and political participation of small freeholders and freemen. However, tobacco was so lucrative, a few planters soon became very wealthy and powerful. Bacon’s death the uprising fell apart allowed large planters to consolidate their power asserting de facto control over the House at the expense of small freeholders and freemen. Their ascendance marked the end of voting rights for freemen and led to the rapid growth of slavery. (for more on Bacon’s Rebellion, see: Bacon’s Rebellion: Still Relevant Today). Trying bring John Martin under the jurisdiction of the House of Burgesses foretold of difficulties major property holders could cause. Large planters came to dominate the assembly introducing slavery and taking away freemen’s right to vote. Universal male suffrage would not return to Virginia until 1830.
In spite of the many difficulties and setbacks, enough of Sandys’ reforms survived. Even if imperfect, over the years Americans became irrevocably wedded to the innovations that appeared in 1619. The Anglo-American controversies arising in the 1760s after the French and Indian War came about over Parliament’s attempt to assert control it had not exercised in over a century. By this time, colonists no longer had to seek approval from England for their laws, particularly taxes. Parliament tried to re-impose British hegemony through the Stamp Act and the Townshend Duties, but by the 1760s it was too late. Sandys’ reference to the Greate Charter as a Magna Carta transferred a sense to American colonists that they were full-fledged Englishmen with ancient rights that no king or parliament could violate. Americans protested in increasingly loud and forceful ways culminating in outright rebellion. The clarion call of the American Revolution: “no taxation without representation” was born out of the perception that Americans had the right to govern themselves—a consensus that began slowly forming in 1619.
Many of these rights did not apply to women, African Americans and Native Americans. Extension of rights would take centuries, but the ideals Sandy’s instilled were powerful and universal. They ultimately could not be contained to benefit one group at the expense of others. Americans built on these principles adding their own modifications and adding new ideas. Representative government, the rule of law, consent of the governed and private property rights lay at the heart of the very ideals used to battle prejudice and discrimination. (see: Another Martin Luther (King) and Natural Law in America and The Long Road for Women’s Suffrage)
The House of Burgesses provided a laboratory and classroom for Virginians in governance and political theory that has served the United States well in the American Revolution, formulation of the Constitution and in leading the early republic. Members such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Madison, James Monroe, George Mason, John Page, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Richard Henry Lee, George Wythe, Spencer Roane, Edmund Pendleton, Peyton Randolph, Richard Bland, John Tyler, Benjamin Harrison, and many others gained invaluable experience that they put to good use in founding and governing the United States.
Five future US Presidents served in the House of Burgesses/Delegates along side prominent founders including the author and several signers of the Declaration of Independence, a primary architect of and delegates/signers of the Constitution, and others who played a significant role in American History.
When thinking about what transpired in 1619, it is important to remember that in the course of history not everything happens at once. That is why current norms are so unuseful in historical analysis. History often occurs gradually and not always in a single direction. By our modern standards, the first meeting seems timid and limited. We must remember, however, that it was a start, not a finish. The House of Burgesses asserted its independence from the beginning, first in small ways but set in motion a process of pushing the envelope to expand power and autonomy. The first assembly is a foundation, not the completed structure. The House set the tone and began a debate over rights and governmental authority that has led to conflicts over voting rights, slavery, and personal freedom that persists to the present.
400 years later, we can conclude that though it took a long time, Sandys’ vision “to establish one equall & uniforme kinde of government over all Virginia & etc.” has succeeded beyond even his wildest dreams.
For more on the founding of Jamestown, please click on: The Travails of Founding Jamestown
[*Author’s Note: I have retained the quirky spelling used in the original document. I will correct spelling if it is too arcane for the modern reader such as the English custom of using of an “f” where the modern reader would use an “s.”]
Footnotes:
[1] Horn, James, 1619, Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy. New York: Basic Books, 2018, p. 136
[2] Ibid., p. 141 quoting Sir John Fortescue.
[3] Ibid., p. 142.
[4] Ibid., p. 144 quoting Sir Thomas Smith.
[5] Ibid., p. 56.
[6] Ibid., p. 77.
[7] Bosher, Kate Langley. “The First House of Burgesses.” The North American Review 184, no. 612 (1907): 735. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25105836.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Pory, John, “A Reporte of the Manner of Proceeding in the General Assembly Convented at James City, 1619. http://www.virtualjamestown.org/exist/cocoon/jamestown/fha/J1036
[10] Bosher, p. 735.
[11] Pory.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
Sources:
Anonymous, Encyclopedia of Virginia, Entry on the House of Burgesses. https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/House_of_Burgesses
Bogart, Dan and Richardson, Gary, Parliament, Property Rights, and Public Goods in England: 1600 to 1815. Irvine CA: University of California-Irvine, 2006. http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~dbogart/parliament.pdf
Bosher, Kate Langley. “The First House of Burgesses.” The North American Review 184, no. 612 (1907): 733-39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25105836.
Detweiler, Robert. “Political Factionalism and the Geographic Distribution of Standing Committee Assignments in the Virginia House of Burgesses 1730-1776.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 80, no. 3 (1972): 267-85. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4247731.
Dr. Nancy Egloff, Historian and Senior Curator at the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation podcast: https://vahistorypodcast.com/2018/08/29/the-house-of-burgesses-interview-with-nancy-egloff/
Greene, Jack P. “Foundations of Political Power in the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1720-1776.” The William and Mary Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1959): 485-506. doi:10.2307/1920216.
Horn, James, 1619, Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy. New York: Basic Books, 2018.
Podcast: https://vahistorypodcast.com/2018/03/27/dr-james-horn-interview/
Kukla, Jon. “Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in Pre-Restoration Virginia.” The American Historical Review 90, no. 2 (1985): 275-98. doi:10.2307/1852667.
Pargellis, S. M. “The Procedure of the Virginia House of Burgesses.” The William and Mary Quarterly 7, no. 3 (1927): 143-57. doi:10.2307/1922239.
Pory, John, “A Reporte of the Manner of Proceeding in the General Assembly Convented at James City, 1619. http://www.virtualjamestown.org/exist/cocoon/jamestown/fha/J1036
Virginia General Assembly. House of Burgesses., Virginia State Library. (1905-1915). Journals. Richmond, Va.: [The Colonial Press, E. Waddy Co.]. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009808184