The Cotirt and Bar of Colonial Virginia. happily in moulding the men of our country in the colonial and Revolutionary era, and nowhere more so than in Virginia. Of all the colonies, Virginia retained with least innovation the social and political char acteristics of the mother country, and of them all was most loyal to the Crown, until forced away by repeated acts of tyranny and usurpation. The activities of her people being directed chiefly to agriculture, she was less in conflict with British interests than were the northern colonies, through their maritime competitions. The common law of England was adopted by Virginia as far as practicable under the differing conditions. The Church of Eng land was the established church of the colony until laws for religious freedom were enacted. The laws of primo-geniture and entail obtained; the prestige of landed pro prietors was recognized and fostered. The education of the sons of the wealthy was often completed in England, those preferring the law, at the Inns of Court, Oxford and Cambridge. The late Hon. Hugh Blair Griggsby, a distinguished authority upon American his tory, and the best upon Virginia antiquities, said, in an address before the alumni at William and Mary College, July 3, 1855, referring to the close relation of Virginia to the mother country, "some of the most intelligent statesmen of the colony regarded Virginia as occupying the same relation to the British Crown as was borne by Scotland before the union of that country with Eng land, and holding the King as the common bond; a doctrine which would seem to be sustained by the arms of the colony, on which were quartered those of England, Scotland and Ireland, with the motto : ' En dat Virginia quartamУ Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Wythe are mentioned as having held this opinion, which is corroborated as to Mr. Jefferson in his memoirs. It adds to the honor of Virginia that, being thus closely connected with England,
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she was the first to give impulse to the American colonies in resisting the British Stamp Act by the resolution in her House of Burgesses in 1765, and that thenceforward she took the lead in the Revolutionary move ment until the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. The Revolution may thus be said to have begun and ended upon her soil. In forming a just estimate of men, the history of their achievements and the proc esses of their development are a more infallible guide than a mere description of their personality. The readers of the Green Bag are already familiar with most of the great lawyers of Virginia who flourished in the later years of the colony and the early period of the commonwealth, through pen portraits of them in the excellent articles by Sallie E. Marshall Hardy. The writer will therefore devote this article mainly to the times, con ditions and institutions that developed them. It has been said by an eminent authority that "the laws of a country are necessarily connected with everything belonging to the people of it, so that a thorough knowledge of them and of their progress would inform us of everything most useful to be known about them.1 If so much is true as to the laws .of a country, a sketch of the Civil Courts and of the law-making bodies must also be of comparative interest. The charter of the London company un der letters patent of the King of England, of date April 10, 1606, under which the first American colony was established, and the first settlement located, by Captain John Smith, at Jamestown, Virginia, on the ißth of Ma)r, 1607, vested in the chartered com pany all powers, legislative, executive and judicial for the colony. These were to be exercised, that is, the executive and judicial functions, chiefly by the " Governor and Coun cil," who were also members of, and elected by the House of Burgesses. According to Stith in his history, the first Assembly ever 'Priestley, as quoted in preface of Hening's Statutes.
