This constitution called for a Council to be chosen from time to time by the Company to assist the Governor in maintaining the "people in justice and Christian conversation amongst themselves, and in strength and ability to withstand their enemies." Another body "to be called by the Governor once yearly and no oftener but for very extraordinary and important occasions, shall consist for the present of the said Council of State, and two Burgesses out of every town, hundred, or other particular plantation, to be respectively chosen by the inhabitants." This body, which was called the General Assembly, was to "have free power to treat, consult, and conclude, as well of all emergent occasions concerning the public weal of the said colony ... as also to make, ordain, and enact such general laws and orders ... as shall from time to time appear necessary." To the Governor was reserved a negative voice. The Governor and Assembly were directed "to imitate and follow the form of government, laws, customs, and manner of trial, and other ministration of justice used in the realm of England." And a limit was put to the authority of the Assembly by a provision that no law should "continue in force" unless ratified by the Company. But a degree of independence was granted in the instruction that "after the government of the said colony shall once have been framed ... no orders of court afterwards shall bind the said colony, unless they be ratified in like manner in the General Assemblies."[15] There must have been rejoicing in Virginia when Yeardley arrived with orders "for the better establishing a commonwealth." Perhaps there were cheers, perhaps tears of joy in the crowd which assembled in Jamestown to listen to his proclamation. It promised that those cruel laws by which they had so long been governed were now abrogated, and that they were to be governed by those free laws which his Majesty's subjects in England lived under.[16] On August 9, 1619, the first representative assembly in American history met in the crude little church at Jamestown. When Governor Yeardley had taken his seat in the choir, the members of the Council sat beside him, some on one side, some on the other. "But forasmuch as men's affairs do little prosper when God's service is neglected, all the Burgesses took their places in the choir till a prayer was said by Mr. Buck, the minister." Then the Burgesses were called in order by name, and so every man took the oath of supremacy.[17]