Paul-
In a nutshell, from 1619-1642 Virginia's unicameral entity was called
either the General or Grand Assembly - from 1643 to 1776 the General
Assembly (now bicameral) comprised the Council and the House of Burgesses.

Jon Kukla

One will not find the name "House of Burgesses" in any primary source
prior to the 1640s - just as one will not find "The United States of
America" prior to the revolution. Back in 1873 I read VCRP microfilm etc 8
hours a day for a month . . .
   The salient thing about your first quote, Paul, is that it is from W.
W. Hening's HEADNOTE - written earily in the 19th century - not from
the contemporary 17th-century sources he was publishing.  Hening and
McIlwaine and lots of others were reading back into the 17th-c a
structure that only began in 1643. In the Jefferson MSS at Library of
Congress, one can see portions of the original manuscript text that
Hening circled with a note to the typesetter that said "Omit" - in at
least one case the omitted material supported my interpretation of the
structure of the assembly . . . but I digress.

   Warren Billings's new book (as well as my dissertation and my _Speakers
and Clerks of the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1643-1776)) document all
this in detail, but in a nutshell:

1619-1642  Unicameral General or Grand Assembly (literally meeting in one
room)
  First General Assembly of 1619 was an expanded meeting of governor and
Council with the addition of elected "burgesses" from various of the
settlements :
  the self-styled "Speaker" John Pory was in fact secretary of the colony
and a member of the Council, not an elected burgess.
  the word "burgess" was English parliamentary term for representative
from a borough (as opposed to a shire or county) hence it goes along
with the early Virginia entities of James City, Charles City, Elizabeth
City ....  (I dealt with the myth of the county formation in 1634 in an
article in Virginia Genealogist back in the 1980s ... formal counties
date to the early 1640s, too.)
  During these decades, the unicameral body was sometimes called the Grand
Assembly, burgesses sat together with governor and council, having been
elected by various geographical settlements and sometimes by parishes.
  When using Hening and especially McIlwaine one must be careful not to
let _their_ misunderstandings obstruct one's perception of the primary
sources . . . .  (I addressed this in my introductions to the 2d
editions of the (as McIlwaine called them) the Legislative Journals of
the Council and the Minutes of the Council and General Court (both
reprint editions published about 1979 I think).
  One also needs to escape the misunderstanding in Robert Beverly's
History where he claimed that a House of Burgesses started meeting
separately in 1680 - I dealt with that in VMHB back in 70s.  Beverley
lifted and misunderstood passages from an earlier report by Hartwell,
Chilton and Blair.

1643-1776 Bicameral General Assembly comprised of Council and House of
Burgesses properly so called.
  1643 is first meeting of a bicameral General Assembly with the elected
members organized separately as a "lower" house properly called the
House of Burgesses - and first real "Speaker" a burgess (unlike Pory)

============

> Warren:  I am confused.  What was the body called from 1619 to 1643?
> After 1643 is the colonial legislature a unicameral and then called the
> House of Burgesses?  Hening, vol. 1, p. 230  mentions in a headnote an
> act "signed by the Governor, memebrs of hte Council and House of
> Burgesses, and dates at James City, the first day of April 1642."  That
> would be a year before 1643."  That act (also on page 230) says it was
> passed by the "We the Governor, Council and Burgesses of the Grand
> Assembly in Virginia...." But, 1 Hening 147 (March 24 1629-30) lists
> "the names of the Burgesses..."
>
> So, there were Burgesses in in 1629-30, but were they not yet "the House
> of Burgesses"?
>
> Paul Finkelman
>
> --
> Paul Finkelman
> Chapman Distinguished Professor
> University of Tulsa College of Law
> 3120 East 4th Place
> Tulsa, Oklahoma  74104-2499
>
> 918-631-3706 (office)
> 918-631-2194 (fax)
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Brent Tarter wrote:
>> 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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