Date of Award

1993

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

History

Abstract

Of the three branches of Colonial Virginia government, only two, the House of Burgesses and the Royal Governor, have been well chronicled during the period immediately preceding the American Revolution. The ignored third branch, the Colonial Council, has been largely dismissed by the few historians treating the subject as inconsequential-both as a political institution, and in the influence of its individual members. Witness both the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography and the William and Mary Quarterly, each with over a century dedicated to the nooks and crannies of all history Virginian, have collectively produced but a single article on the pre-Revolution Council, concluding tepidly that: "the area has been much neglected".

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