Dictionary.net

the lower branch of the Colonial Legislature of Virginia. The first House of Burgesses was summoned in 1619. The House met at Jamestown in the seventeenth century, at Williamsburg in the eighteenth. It consisted of two burgesses from each county, and one from each of three towns and William and Mary College. The printed journals begin with the year 1732. The forms of procedure were those of the House of Commons. The last session of the burgesses occurred in 1774.