House of Burgesses

House of Burgesses, the representative assembly of colonial Virginia. The earliest of the American assemblies, the House of Burgesses first met on July 30, 1619, in Jamestown, Virginia. It consisted of the governor, his council, two burgesses (representatives) from each Virginia county, one burgess from each of the towns of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Norfolk, and one burgess from the College of William and Mary. The burgesses were elected and had the right to create legislation but the governor and the council could veto it. After 1699 the assembly met in Williamsburg, which had become the capital of Virginia by then.

The House of Burgesses developed in part the idea of self-government and trained colonial leaders such as George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson. In response to the Stamp Act of 1765, the burgesses passed several resolutions introduced by Patrick Henry that condemned taxes not imposed by the assembly itself. In 1774 the House of Burgesses initiated a colony-wide convention that resulted in the First Continental Congress. In May 1774 the House of Burgesses declared a day of prayer to support colonists in Boston, Massachusetts. The British had closed Boston Harbor in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, an incident in which colonials dumped imported tea into the harbor to protest a tax on tea. In response to the burgesses’ support for Massachusetts, Governor Dunmore of Virginia angrily dissolved the legislature. The burgesses continued to assemble at state conventions without the governor’s consent.