Note 46 — Chapter XI · BACON’S REBELLION.

Beverley (History and Present State of Virginia, London, 1705, bk. iv. p. 3) tells us that before 1680 the council and burgesses sat together, like the Scotch parliament, and that the separation occurred under Lord Culpeper’s administration; and his statement is generally repeated by historians without qualification. Yet here in 1676 we find the two houses sitting separately, and the discussion cited shows that it had often been so before; otherwise the sending of two councillors to sit with the burgesses could not have been customary. Beverley’s date of 1680 was evidently intended as the final date of separation; not as the date before which the two houses never sat separately, but as the date after which they never sat together.