In the relation of Master John Rolfe, inserted by Captain John Smith in his History of Virginia,[E] there is this meagre notice of the Assembly: "The 25 of June came in the _Triall_ with Corne and Cattell in all safety, which tooke from vs cleerely all feare of famine; then our gouernor and councell caused Burgesses to be chosen in all places and met at a generall Assembly, where all matters were debated thought expedient for the good of the Colony." This account did not attract the attention of Beverley, the early historian of Virginia, who denies that there was any Assembly held there before May, 1620.[F] The careful Stith, whose work is not to be corrected without a hearty recognition of his superior diligence and exemplary fidelity, gives an account[G] of this first legislative body, though he errs a little in the date by an inference from Rolfe's narrative, which the words do not warrant. The prosperity of Virginia begins with the day when it received, as "a commonwealth," the freedom to make laws for itself. In a solemn address to King James, which was made during the government of Sir Francis Wyatt, and bears the signature of the Governor, Council, and apparently every member of the Assembly, a contrast is drawn between the former "miserable bondage," and "this just and gentle authoritye which hath cherished us of late by more worthy magistrates. And we, our wives and poor children shall ever pray to God, as our bounden duty is, to give you in this worlde all increase of happines, and to crowne you in the worlde to come w^{th} immortall glorye."[H] A desire has long existed to recover the record of the proceedings of the Assembly which inaugurated so happy a revolution. Stith was unable to find it; no traces of it were met by Jefferson; and Hening,[I] and those who followed Hening, believed it no longer extant. Indeed, it was given up as hopelessly lost. Having, during a long period of years, instituted a very thorough research among the papers relating to America in the British State Paper Office, partly in person and partly with the assistance of able and intelligent men employed in that Department, I have at last been so fortunate as to obtain the "Proceedings of the First Assembly of Virginia."[5] the document is in the form of "a reporte" from the Speaker; and is more fall and circumstantial than any subsequent journal of early legislation in the Ancient Dominion.