Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
On 20 February 1637/38, the Virginia House of Burgesses, ‘called by his Majesty's appointment’, convened to consider five ‘Propositions’ offered by Charles 1 for the reformation of their colony's tobacco trade. An investigation into the career and context of this ‘Assembly’ better informs us of the character of that monarch's government and, correspondingly, on English ‘state formation’ and empire in the first half of the seventeenth century. We learn that, as in its three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the Crown and its officers experienced little joy in their efforts to clear the lines of authority connecting Whitehall with the rest of the king's domains.