es
a representative government; to the governor and his council,
appointed in England, there was added a general assembly composed of
two burgesses from each "plantation," [2] elected by the inhabitants.
This assembly, the first legislative body that ever sat in America,
met on the 30th of July, 1619, in the choir of the rude church at
Jamestown. The dignity of the burgesses was preserved, as in the House
of Commons, by sitting with their hats on; and after offering prayer,
and taking the oath of allegiance and supremacy, they proceeded to
enact a number of laws relating to public worship, to agriculture, and
to intercourse with the Indians. Curiously enough, so confident was
the belief of the settlers that they were founding towns, that they
called their representatives "burgesses," and down to 1776 the
assembly continued to be known as the House of "Burgesses," although
towns refused to grow in Virginia, and soon after counties were
organized in 1634 the burgesses sat for counties. Such were the
beginnings of representative government in Virginia.

[Footnote 2: The word "plantation" is here used, not in its later and
ordinary sense, as the estate belonging to an individual planter,
but in an earlier sense. In this early usage it was equivalent to
"settlement." It was used in New England as well as in Virginia;
thus Salem was spoken of by the court of assistants in 1629 as "New
England's Plantation."]

[Sidenote: Company of Massachusetts Bay.]
The government of Massachusetts is descended from the Dorchester
Company formed in England in 1623, for the ostensible purpose of
trading in furs and timber and catching fish on the shores of
Massachusetts Bay. After a disastrous beginning this company was
dissolved, but only to be immediately reorganized on a greater scale.
In 1628 a grant of the land between the Charles and Merrimack rivers
was obtained from the Plymouth Company; and in 1629 a charter was
obtained from Charles I. So many men from the east of England had
joined in the enterprise that it could no longer be fitly called a
Dorchester Company. The new name was significantly taken from the
New World. The charter created a corporation under the style of the
Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. The freemen
of the Company were to hold a meeting four times a year; and they were
empowered to choose a governor, a deputy governor, and a council of
eighteen assistants, who were to hold their meetings