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Essay On The Colony Of Virginia

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The colony of Virginia was founded by a stock company: the Virginia Company. To attract people Virginia made a wonderful charter. Emigrants who paid their own way to Virginia got fifty acres of land. There would not be mere tenants. Civil authority would control the military. A council of burgesses, representatives chosen by the inhabitants of the colony for their government, would be convened as the House of Burgesses. The governor could veto their actions and the company still had overall control of the venture, but the settlers would have a say in their own government, including the right of the House of Burgesses to introduce money bills. The King’s court appointed a royal governor, someone who had never set foot on the land of …show more content…

The governor chose six people in the colony to be in his council. The other fifteen people were chosen by the king because of their family and wealth. In all, there were twenty-two members that attended. All the representatives were English. Each of the Virginian counties had sent a representative to the house. The first meeting was on July 30, 1619. It was held in the choir of the church on Jamestown Island. It lasted for six days, but was cut short by the disease, Malaria. Problems began to strike, like a massacre from the Native Americans where they killed 400 colonists. As hard as the government tried to conceal the problems, the king heard about them. He made virginia a crown colony. The king divided the colony into eight shires. By 1643, there were 15 shires! Most jobs were simply commanded to people. Only the representatives got votes to represent. Each shire would send a vote for a representative to go and work in the House, rather than have it be just rich people. White men that were seventeen years old or older and owned land were able to vote for these representatives. In 1652, Oliver Cromwell forced Jamestown to admit that they had been taken over. However, that did not mean that their

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