Va-Hist subscriber Warren Billings asked me to post this to the list, as
he has had some computer difficulty.

Subject:  Another bit of pedantry 
Date:  Fri, 01 Apr 2005 09:32:47 -0600 
From:  "Dr. Warren M. Billings" <[log in to unmask]> 
To:  [log in to unmask] 


Permit me to add another bit of pedantry to the recent postings about
ecclesiastical law and practices in colonial Virginia

In those discussions, several commentators equate "House of Burgesses"
with "General Assembly." Those were not synonymous terms. The General
Assembly, after 1643, consisted of the governor-general, the Council of
State, and the House of Burgesses, all of whom had to concur before any
bill passed into law. Constitutionally, therefore, the house could not
enact laws ex mero motu. Also, the burgesses could not "enforce" the law
of religion or any other for that matter. The power and obligation for
execution of the statutes in force lay with the colony's magistracy. To
be sure, many of those magistrates sat on the Council or in the House,
but when they enforced the law, they did so in their capacity as General
Court judge or justice of the peace, not as councillor of state or
burgess.

The General Assembly, as Jon Kukla and others have clearly demonstrated,
began as a unicameral body. Thus, there was no House of Burgesses
between 1619 and 1643, the year Sir William Berkeley encouraged the
assembly to become bicameral.

Warren M. Billings

Warren M. Billings
Distinguished Professor
Department of History
University of New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana 70148

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