House of Burgesses

HOUSE OF BURGESSES

HOUSE OF BURGESSES, the first popularly elected legislature in America. It first met as a one-house assembly in Virginia on 30 July 1619, with a governor, Sir George Yeardley, four members of the council, and two burgesses from each of the boroughs, to preserve the same rights as the residents of Britain for Virginia's freeholders, the white male property holders. The house determined the eligibility of its own members, passed local laws, carried out the provisions of the governor and the charter, and regulated taxes. It developed into a two-house legislature, with little English influence by the mid-seventeenth century. On 29 June 1776, the house declared Virginia's independence from Great Britain and wrote the state's first constitution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Griffith, Lucille Blanche. The Virginia House of Burgesses, 1750–1774. University: University of Alabama Press, 1970.

Morton, Richard Lee. Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960.

Quitt, Martin H. Virginia House of Burgesses, 1660–1706: The Social, Educational, and Economic Bases of Political Power. New York: Garland, 1989.

Michelle M. Mormul

See also Assemblies, Colonial ; Chesapeake Colonies ; Virginia .