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.
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