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From its beginnings in 1619, this first legislative body consisted only of free, white male land owners. In many ways, their legislation reflected the needs and priorities of individuals just like them. Virginia’s House of Burgesses is remembered as the first representative legislative body in English North America, though the importance of representation in government continues to evolve. In 1643 Gov. Sir William Berkeley split the House of Burgesses off as a separate chamber of the thereafter bicameral assembly. Like the British House of Commons, the House of Burgesses granted supplies and originated laws, and the governor and council enjoyed the right of revision and veto as did the king and the House of Lords in England.
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Berkeley had arrived in Virginia at a time when the king assumed a relatively hands-off posture toward the colony, and the new governor sought to promote a new class of leaders who shared his ambitions for economic diversification and continuation of trade with the Netherlands. 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. This body of men was comprised of an appointed Governor and six Councilors, as well as 22 men called burgesses (a burgess was a freeman of a borough in England). Most importantly, the burgesses were elected by the eligible voters (free white males) in the colony, thus making this General Assembly the first elected representative legislature in British America.
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In 1624 the Crown revoked the Virginia Company’s charter; Virginia became a royal colony in 1625. The General Assembly continued to convene without any explicit royal authorization—the governor, Council, and burgesses unified by a drive for land and labor. Fearing that a lack of royal sanction might invalidate the laws of the assembly, place land titles under legal question, or even abolish the legislature altogether, the General Assembly sent representatives to England to seek official backing. King Charles I, who had succeeded James I on March 27, 1625, issued no ruling on the matter. The assembly met with its status unclear in 1625 and 1626; in 1627, the assembly received de facto recognition when the king asked the General Assembly to take part in regulating the tobacco trade.
Moving toward independence
These rules derived from old English principles that assumed that only those with a long-term economic stake in society should be considered full political participants. It is not known how representatives were selected or who did the selecting for the first few decades, but by 1646, and probably before, all freemen—those who were not slaves or indentured servants—could choose burgesses. In 1655, only “housekeepers,” or those who headed a household, could vote, but this rule was relaxed the next year and all freemen could again vote. Tightening of the franchise occurred once more in 1670, when the law stated that only “ffreeholders and housekeepers” could cast ballots. This in turn was rescinded briefly during Bacon’s Rebellion (1676–1677) but reinstated after the insurrection collapsed. The law made clear in 1684 that tenants with life leases, not just outright landowners, could also participate in elections and that a person could vote in any county in which he held land.
There clearly had been abuses in earlier years, but the issue came to a head in 1735 when the sheriff of one county and a candidate of another county blatantly executed land deeds for only a few acres just days before the election. The following year, the House of Burgesses specified that 100 acres of unimproved land or 25 acres of improved land had to be owned for at least one year prior to voting. Although the House tried to reduce the unimproved acreage to 50 in 1762 and 1769, both laws were rejected in England and the 1736 law stood for the remainder of the colonial period.
Elections in Colonial Virginia
When Sir Francis Wyatt returned to Virginia in 1639 for a second term as governor, his commission contained the king’s acknowledgement of the assembly’s right to approve tax increases. The House of Burgesses was the first elected legislative assembly in the New World, established in Virginia in 1619. It was composed of two representatives from each of the colony’s 11 districts and was responsible for making laws in the colony, including setting taxes. It was an early form of representative democracy in America, although voting rights were restricted to white, male property owners. The House of Burgesses played an important role in the development of self-government and representative democracy in America, and many of its members went on to play significant roles in the American Revolution and became Founding Fathers. The evolution of the franchise—the set of rules governing who could and who could not vote—developed gradually over the seventeenth century as well, and did not reach its final definition until the 1730s.
Native American Democracy
It was where the people of Virginia passed laws, debated revolutionary ideas, appeared in court, and pled for emancipation. Functioned as a simple parliament that passed legislation for the entire colony of Virginia. The new system provided for local governments as well as a general assembly for the whole colony. The new assembly replaced the martial law with English Common Law, and for the first time, gave people the right to own lands. This legislative governance was the first major step towards democracy during colonial rule.
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On average, about 50 percent of adult white male Virginians qualified by outright ownership and another 20 percent entered the electorate as life tenants. By the mid-eighteenth century, the average Virginia county included about 350 voters, but a few were as small as 125 and some had more than 1,000 freeholders. Between 75 and 100 voters selected the single delegate from Williamsburg, while just a handful of faculty elected the representative from William and Mary. After the capital moved to Williamsburg in 1699, Jamestown continued to elect a single burgess, but with perhaps fewer than 25 voters, it began to resemble the much maligned “rotten boroughs” of England.
Jamestown Colony of Virginia
At this time, England took much more control of things in Virginia, restricting the powers of the House of Burgesses. The Governor’s Council, whose members were appointed by the King or Queen, served as the upper house of the Virginia legislature. They considered legislation originating from the Burgesses, managed several aspects of colonial affairs, and advised the governor. This body was made up of the leading members of the colony’s wealthiest and most powerful families. Williamsburg’s Capitol was the center of British authority in Virginia for most of the eighteenth century.
The word eventually developed into ‘borough’, meaning a place in London, later a representative official originating from such a place came to be known as ‘Burgess’ in the English House of Commons in Parliament. Washington served on the standing committees of Propositions and Grievances, Elections and Privileges, and Religion, as well as being placed on various committees to write bills or negotiate with other groups. Much of the House’s business was evaluating petitions from the public for specific interventions.
Having first met in Jamestown in 1619, the Burgesses gathered in the Williamsburg Capitol from 1705 until 1776. Many of Virginia’s leading revolutionaries, including Peyton Randolph, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, served as Burgesses. The first elected assembly gathered in the House of Burgesses on July 30, 1619, in Jamestown. The House of Burgesses continued to meet annually, even after the dissolution of the Virginia Company in 1624 brought the colony under direct royal control.
In 1713 Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood pushed through the assembly a law to require in every county the construction of a public tobacco warehouse where inspectors would grade all tobacco before export. The objective was to increase the quality of exported tobacco and thereby increase the price that English merchants paid Virginia planters. In the 1715 election the voters in many counties, fearing that the lieutenant governor was gaining too much influence with representatives dependent on him for their income, defeated many of those burgesses. The new members of the House passed a bill to repeal the law, but Spotswood killed the bill. The General Assembly then passed a law requiring that if the governor or lieutenant governor appointed any burgess to the office of sheriff or any other office of profit, the burgess had to resign from the House.
In 1774, after Parliament passed the Boston Port Act which closed the port of Boston, the House of Burgesses again voiced their opposition in a series of resolves. The Virginia House of Burgesses became the first general assembly of the commonwealth when the United States declared its independence from England in 1776. One of the first legislation passed by this general assembly was religious equality and the disownment of the Church of England in Virginia. The house of Burgesses was disbanded by Governor Lord Dunmore, in 1773, for revolutionary activities against the British monarch, he dissolved the legislature completely in 1774. As the House of Burgesses was prohibited from meeting, Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech “Give me liberty or give me death!
From these meetings came the Virginia Conventions, wherein many of the elected members were former burgesses. The first four conventions largely dealt with how to plan for the defense of the colony in the event of war, including establishing the Committee of Safety. The fifth Virginia Convention in 1776, however, formally declared the relationship between Virginia and King and Parliament “totally dissolved,” and instructed the Virginia delegates to the Second Continental Congress to vote in favor of a resolution on independence. 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.
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