This book examines the founding and evolution of the oldest legislative body in the New World. The Virginia assembly developed legislative traditions that provided the basis of the American form of representative government. Based on extensive research in original records, the book also reinterprets the political history of the colony and illuminates the role of European events and commercial growth in the rise of the governing class of Virginia. It includes vignettes of many of the colony's earliest political leaders and focuses attention on how their actions shaped the lives of all the colony's residents between 1619 and 1700.