Colonial Records of Virginia | Page 4

is, to give you in this worlde all increase of happines, and to crowne you in the worlde to come w^{th} immortall glorye."[H]
A desire has long existed to recover the record of the proceedings of the Assembly which inaugurated so happy a revolution. Stith was unable to find it; no traces of it were met by Jefferson; and Hening,[I] and those who followed Hening, believed it no longer extant. Indeed, it was given up as hopelessly lost.
Having, during a long period of years, instituted a very thorough research among the papers relating to America in the British State Paper Office, partly in person and partly with the assistance of able and intelligent men employed in that Department, I have at last been so fortunate as to obtain the "Proceedings of the First Assembly of Virginia."[5] the document is in the form of "a reporte" from the Speaker; and is more fall and circumstantial than any subsequent journal of early legislation in the Ancient Dominion.
Many things are noticeable. The Governor and Council sat with the Burgesses; and took part in motions and debates. The Secretary of the Colony was chosen Speaker, and I am not sure that he was a Burgess.[6] This first American Assembly set the precedent of beginning legislation with prayer. It is evident that Virginia was then as thoroughly a Church of England colony, as Connecticut afterwards was a Calvinistic one. The inauguration of legislative power in the Ancient Dominion preceded the existence of negro slavery, which we will believe it is destined also to survive. The earliest Assembly in the oldest of the original thirteen States, at its first session, took measures "towards the erecting of" a "University and Colledge." Care was also taken for the education of Indian children. Extravagance in dress was not prohibited, but the ministers were to profit by a tax on excess in apparel. On the whole, the record of these Proceedings will justify the opinion of Sir Edward Sandys, that "they were very well and judiciously carried." The different functions of government may have been confounded and the laws were not framed according to any speculative theory; but a perpetual interest attaches to the first elective body representing the people of Virginia, more than a year before the Mayflower, with the Pilgrims, left the harbor of Southampton, and while Virginia was still the oldest British Colony on the whole Continent of America.
GEORGE BANCROFT.
NEW YORK, October 3, 1856.
[A] "A Briefe Declaration of the Plantation of Virginia during the first twelve yeares, when Sir Thomas Smyth was Governor, of the Companie, and downe to this present tyme. By the Ancient Planters now remaining alive in Virginia."--MS. in my possession.[2]
[B] "A Briefe Declaration," &c.
[C] "A Briefe Declaration," &c.
[D] "Proceedings of the first Assembly," now first printed in this volume.
[1] "Henrico, now Richmond," is a grievous error. "Henrico, or Henricus, was situated ten miles below the present site of Richmond, on the main land, to which the peninsula known as Farrar's Island was joined." See footnote Q.--ED.
[2] This document is the third in this collection. It is printed from the copy obtained by Col. McDonald.--ED.
[E] Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia, Richmond edition, Vol. ii. pp. 38, 39.
[F] See Beverley's History of Virginia, p. 37 of the first edition, and p. 35 of the second.[3]
[G] Stith's History of Virginia p. 160, Williamsburg edition.[4]
[H] MS. Copy of Address of Sir Francis Wyatt, &c., &c., to King James I., signed by Sir Francis Wyatt and 32 others. [I] Hening's Statutes at Large, I., p. 119. refers to the acts of 1623-'4 as "the earliest now extant."
[3] "These Burgesses met the Governor and Council at Jamestown in 1620, and sat in consultation in the same house with them as the method of the Scots Parliament is." "This was the first Generall Assembly that ever was held there."--Beverley.--ED.
[4] "And about the latter end of June (1619) he (Sir George Yeardley, Governor,) called the first General Assembly that was ever held in Virginia. Counties were not yet laid of, but they elected their representatives by townships. So that the Burroughs of Jamestown, Henrico, Bermuda Hundred, and the rest, each sent their members to the Assembly." * * * * "and hence it is that our lower house of Assembly was first called the House of Burgesses," Stith, p. 160. "In May, this year (1620), there was held another Generall Assembly, which has, through mistake, and the indolence and negligence of our historians in searching such ancient records as are still extant in the country, been commonly reported the first General Assembly," Ib. p. 182. We do not see that Stith "errs" even "a little in the data." Rolfe says, "The 25 of June came in the Triall with Corne and Cattell in all safety, which took from us cleerely all feare