In 1607, the company's governing board in London appointed a small group of seven men to manage the day-to-day affairs of the colony on their behalf after the first settlers landed on the Virginia Peninsula.

[1] On April 26, 1607, the Council elected Captain Edward Maria Wingfield as its President, and he would later choose the site for the founding of the Jamestown settlement.

Internal dissension, allegations of lying, and the unexpected deaths of some councilors reduced the Governor's Council to a small group and finally only one person by the winter of 1608–1609.

The General Assembly, which included both a popularly elected (albeit not universally enfranchised) and an Executive-Legislative hybrid based somewhat on the British system, was to be the voice of the colonists in Virginia, providing a check on the power of the governor.

[2] Members of Virginia's first legislative assembly, which was a unicameral session including burgesses, the council, and the governor, gathered at the rough-hewn Anglican Jamestown Church on July 30, 1619.

[2] Before they adjourned, the assembly had adopted new laws for the colonists as well as programs designed to encourage settlement and improve economic growth in Virginia.

In the 1652–1660 period when Britain was not a monarchy due to the overthrow of King Charles I and execution in the English Civil War and erection of the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell, the members of the council, instead of being appointed by the head of state in London, were elected by the burgesses in Virginia.

Independent wealth was required both for the social standing necessary for membership and also to permit the members to be absent from their families and plantations for long periods of time," according to the Encyclopedia Virginia.

In June 29, 1776, Virginia ratified its constitution, which distributed state power among three branches of the new government: the executive, the judiciary, and the legislature.