Virginia Governor's Council

The Council consisted of no more than 12 men who served lifetime appointments to advise the governor and were, together with the governor, the highest court in the colony. Thus this body served as a legislative, executive, and judicial body. Modeled after the British House of Lords, the Governor's Council went through an evolution as the Virginia colony grew. During much of the colonial period, the governor was absentee and the lieutenant governor was the beneficiary of the council's advice. When both were absent, the longest-serving member of the council, entitled the President of the council, would serve as acting governor. During the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell between 1652 and 1660, the House of Burgesses elected the members of the council. After the restoration of the monarchy, the Crown again appointed the council, typically from among the landed and wealthy Virginia planters. ==History==

Virginia Company (1607–1624) Virginia was founded under a charter granted by King James I to the Virginia Company in 1606. In 1607, the company's governing board in London appointed a small group of seven men to manage the day-to-day affairs of the colony on their behalf after the first settlers landed on the Virginia Peninsula. At that point, the Virginia Company essentially declared martial law and suspended the minimal semblance of collaborative government. The other branch of government was a General Assembly that included the Council and a House of Burgesses that included two "burgesses" from every town, hundred, and particular plantation "chosen by the [free] inhabitants thereof". This new political structure necessarily reduced the power of the governor, a previously unilaterally powerful office that had been appointed for life. Under the new charter, sometimes called the Great Charter, Council decisions were made by majority vote, and the governor was only able to cast the deciding vote in the case of a tie. The General Assembly, which included both a popularly elected (albeit not universally enfranchised) and an Executive-Legislative hybrid based somewhat on the British system, was to be the voice of the colonists in Virginia, providing a check on the power of the governor. Delegates to the 1850 Virginia constitutional convention chose not to retain the Council as a formal body, vesting many of its remaining functions in the popularly-elected offices of Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General. Records The extant written records of the council begin in 1680 and are housed at the Library of Virginia. ==See also==