Why were the Virginia House Burgesses and New England town meetings important?

Well before the beginning of the eighteenth century the House of Burgesses had developed a set of formal parliamentary procedures and operated with standing committees that assisted, as in the House of Commons, with the flow of business. Veteran members of the House usually chaired the most important of the standing committees, providing leadership and experience for committee work and for legislative deliberations. The body already held strong fiscal control over the colony. It had been setting the tax rate since the seventeenth century, and it authorized the payment of all claims against Virginia in the eighteenth. The House’s members came by custom in the 1730s and 1740s to have the sole power of introducing new bills in the legislature. During the third quarter of the century, for reasons that are not entirely clear, fewer burgesses chose not to run for reelection or were defeated when they did. The longer services of those members augmented the institutional memory of the House and provided its members with the ability to challenge royal governors and British policies in the interest of protecting the power of their governmental institutions and their economic and cultural values.

Speaker’s Chair

The office of speaker became a highly sought-after post of honor and influence. In 1691 the assembly created an office of treasurer of the colony to collect and disburse the tax money raised under its authority. At nearly every session of the assembly a law was passed to renew the office and designate the speaker of the House as treasurer, which allowed him to retain a stated portion of the money that passed through the treasurer’s office to compensate the speaker for his time and labor.

From 1738 to 1766, John Robinson Jr. held the position of speaker and treasurer. Robinson’s knowledge of parliamentary procedure and long tenure enabled him, arguably, to wield more political power than any other man of his time. Imperial authorities and a group of burgesses that included Richard Henry Lee felt that allowing one person to occupy these two positions consolidated too much power in a single man’s hands, but were unable to curtail his influence. It was not until after Robinson died that his accounts as treasurer were discovered to be in arrears of more than £100,000—he had been recycling currency earmarked for destruction by lending it to his friends and supporters, many of whom were burgesses themselves. The offices were finally separated in 1766.

Prologue to Revolution

In the mid-eighteenth century the House of Burgesses reemerged as the most influential branch of the colony’s government. In 1754 the burgesses sent an agent to London to challenge Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie‘s imposition of a pistole fee for signing land grants; in 1759 they sent an agent to London again, this time to defend the legality of the Two Penny Acts of 1755 and 1758 before the Privy Council. 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.

Starting in 1764, when Parliament’s House of Commons revealed its plan to impose a stamp tax on the colonists to raise money to pay off the debt accumulated during the war with France, members of the House of Burgesses took the lead in defending the rights of the colonists, who were not represented in Parliament. 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.

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 May 1776 the House of Burgesses ceased to meet, and the Virginia Constitution of 1776 created a new General Assembly composed of an elected Senate and an elected House of Delegates. The House of Delegates was the House of Burgesses by another name. Landowners continued to elect representatives to the House of Delegates, two from each county and one from each city. 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.

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.

What was the importance of the Virginia House of Burgesses?

Why was the first meeting of the House of Burgesses important?

Why are the House of Burgesses and the New England town meetings considered early examples of self government?