Virginia’s Act XII: Negro Women’s Children to Serve according to the Condition of the Mother

About the Author

Identifying a specific author for Act XII: Negro Women’s Children to Serve according to the Condition of the Mother is extremely difficult, if not impossible. The records of the burgesses’ proceedings do not contain the names of the individuals who wrote specific laws. Other than specifying two persons, Sir William Berkeley and Captain Robert Wynne, the record leaves other possible legislative authors anonymous.

We can identify, however, what the burgesses were or represented, rather than exactly who produced the statute. In 1619 the House of Burgesses was established during a reorganization of the Virginia Company of London led by Sir Edwin Sandys, who had served earlier as the company’s joint manager and treasurer. The House of Burgesses represents one facet of a larger scheme to transform the Virginia settlement from a commercial enterprise staffed by company employees into a colony of the British Empire. Officials of the Virginia Company hoped to encourage a sense of permanence and stability by granting land to the residents and providing them with at least the semblance of local governance.

The plan for the Virginia House of Burgesses called for a bicameral body that had the power to create and adjudicate local law. The burgesses could not, however, make laws that affected intercolonial trade, dispute aspects of English common law, or set themselves up in opposition to the monarchy or Parliament. The original body consisted of the Assembly and the Governor’s Council. Members of the Assembly were elected by each county’s court. The Assembly comprised two representatives per county, who usually were those individuals with the greatest social prestige and the most acreage. The county court consisted of adult male landowners. The members of the Governor’s Council were selected in London by the stockholders of the Virginia Company. The councilors made up an elite body of individuals who wielded considerable clout on both sides of the Atlantic. Collectively, the two chambers represented the colony’s powerful elite. By the 1660s, the burgesses met annually in two sessions; one took place in the spring of each year, and a second convened in the late fall.

Sir William Berkeley is the better known of the two individuals explicitly associated with Act XII. Like most of Virginia’s colonial governors, Berkeley had been born in England. He received his initial appointment to the governorship of Virginia in 1641 and took up residence in the colony in 1642. Commissioned by King Charles I, Berkeley was a firm royalist who supported the monarchy during the English Civil War. He went so far as to offer supporters of the monarchy sanctuary in Virginia. Removed from office in 1652 under threat of imprisonment for treason, he negotiated a compromise that kept him in Virginia and in possession of his estates. After the Restoration began in 1660, he was recommended as governor and served again until his recall in 1677 in the aftermath of Bacon’s Rebellion, an uprising of colonists on the frontier against both Native Americans and the ruling white political elite.

Less is known of Captain Robert Wynne. A roster of burgesses present for the sessions of 1661–1663 lists him as the speaker and suggests that he held property in Charles City County, which is located on the north side of the James River roughly equidistant from Jamestown and Henrico. Many of Virginia’s earliest settlers resided in this vicinity. His title, captain, was most likely in recognition of his status in the local militias and not an indicator of military rank. His selection as speaker was a mark of respect among his colleagues and gave him some power over the phrasing of the presentation of materials to the body.