when did the virginia house of burgesses hold its last session
House of Burgesses In 1776 the House of Burgesses ended. The final entry in the Journals of the House of Burgesses is "6th of May. 16 Geo. III. 1776 â€¦ FINIS."[27] Edmund Pendleton, a member of the House of Burgesses (and President of the Committee of Safety) who was present at the final meeting, wrote in a letter to Richard Henry Lee on the following day, "We met in assembly yesterday, and determined not to adjourn, but let that body die." Later on the same morning, the members of the fifth and final Virginia Revolutionary Convention met in the chamber of the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg and elected Pendleton its president. The convention voted for independence from Britain.[28] The former colony had become the independent Commonwealth of Virginia and the convention created the Constitution of Virginia with a new General Assembly, composed of an elected Senate and an elected House of Delegates. The House of Delegates acceded to the role of the former House of Burgesses.[3]
Virginia Plan The Virginia Plan proposed a legislative branch consisting of two chambers (bicameral legislature), with the dual principles of rotation in office and recall applied to the lower house of the national legislature.[5] Each of the states would be represented in proportion to their "Quotas of contribution, or to the number of free inhabitants."[6] States with a large population, like Virginia (which was the most populous state at the time), would thus have more representatives than smaller states. Large states supported this plan, and smaller states generally opposed it, preferring an alternative put forward on June 15. The New Jersey Plan proposed a single-chamber legislature in which each state, regardless of size, would have one vote, as under the Articles of Confederation. In the end, the convention settled on the Connecticut Compromise, creating a House of Representatives apportioned by population and a Senate in which each state is equally represented.