... start. The first permanent English settlement was a trading post founded in 1607 at Jamestown in the Old Dominion of Virginia. Virginian colonists had the right, granted to them by The Virginia Company, to elect a colonial legislature, called the House of Burgesses. Since Virginia was the first royal colony, it was only fitting that they should lead the way with the first representative government in the New World. Other lawmaking bodies, not that dissimilar to the House of Burgesses, would soon pop up in other colonies. The Pilgrims also pioneered the way to democracy. If the Pilgrims had settled in Virginia, where they had originally planned, they would have been subject to the authority of the Virginia Company. In their own colony of Plymouth, they were beyond any governmental jurisdiction, so established their own political organization "to combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for out better ordering and ...

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