Virginia Vignettes

No. Authority for running the colony resided first with the London Company and later with the King and his privy council, which could impose rules on the colony and veto the actions of governors and the General Assembly. Furthermore, powerful planter elite controlled the internal affairs of Virginia through its positions in the House of Burgesses, county [...]

An important attraction for liberty-loving Englishmen to come to Virginia in the 1620s was the creation of a representative assembly to assist in the governing of the colony. Twenty-two elected delegates or burgesses convened with new governor Sir George Yeardley and his advisory Council of State on 30 July 1619 in the wooden Jamestown church [...]

In 1619 a group of some twenty Angolans arrived in Virginia on a Dutch frigate, which had taken them from a Portuguese vessel. These first Africans were likely Kimbundo-speaking Christians from Ndongo, where 4,000 had been captured in 1618. Although probably considered slaves by their captors, they apparently were accorded the status of indentureship in the Virginia [...]

Captain John Smith (1580-1631) was a member of the resident council sent by the London Company to establish an outpost in Virginia in 1607. A short, stocky soldier of fortune from Lincolnshire, Smith had fought Spaniards and Turks across the map of Europe. He had been captured and enslaved in Turkey, until he killed his [...]