The House of Burgesses

The House of Burgesses

Introduction

At the instigation of Patrick Henry, the Virginia House of Burgesses—its lower house of assembly—passed a set of resolutions on May 30, 1765, declaring opposition to the Stamp Act (1765). Henry was a relatively new member of the Burgesses, but he had already earned something of a reputation as a firebrand. He introduced the resolutions after the majority of members had left and as the Burgesses were about to adjourn; only 39 of 117 members were in attendance. While the resolves merely echoed the message of previous petitions against imperial regulation agreed to by the Virginia legislature, the language and tone of these resolves was more intense. The first two resolves traced the rights of Virginians to the earliest settlements and the charters for colonial government issued by the kings of England. The next two resolves asserted that “the distinguishing Characteristick of British freedom, without which the ancient Constitution cannot exist” is that taxation could be exacted only by “the people themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves” and that the right to be governed and taxed by laws of their own choosing “hath been constantly recognized by the Kings and People of Great Britain” (Mayer, 2006).

Discussion

There remains some confusion over the exact process by which these resolutions were passed. On May 30, 1765, the Burgesses agreed to five resolutions. The next day it rescinded the fifth resolution, which declared that only the Virginia general assembly had the right to tax the colonies and that any challenge to this right “has a manifest Tendency to destroy British as well as American Freedom.” When newspapers throughout the colonies printed the Virginia Resolves, however, they included the fifth and one or two others. Historians are unsure how the newspapers obtained the sixth and seventh resolves. The additional resolutions were highly inflammatory, declaring that colonists “are not bound to yield obedience” to any taxes other than passed by the colonial legislature, and that anyone speaking or writing that parliament had the right to tax the colony would be deemed “AN ENEMY TO THIS HIS MAJESTY'S COLONY.” The seven resolves together had a tremendous impact on the other colonies, and when eight other colonial assemblies passed their own resolutions, they used the more provocative seven resolutions as a model (Morgan, 2007).

The House of Burgesses was the first legislative body in British North America. For the first decade of English settlement in Virginia, the colony and its parent organization, the Virginia Company, concentrated on the daily survival of the settlers and the establishment of a viable cash crop. By 1619 the military-style government that had been in place for nearly 10 years was replaced by a more representative system that included the House of Burgesses.

When Sir Edwin Sandys gained control of the foundering Virginia Company in 1618, he ordered the colony's newly appointed governor, Sir George Yeardley, to establish a representative governmental body in the hope that it would make Virginia more appealing to potential ...