Each of the incorporations mentioned above and the Eastern Shore contained one or more boroughs or settlements. Eleven of the settlements in the four incorporations were represented by two Burgesses each, in the first General Assembly. This, the first legislative assembly of English speaking people in the Western hemisphere, convened on 30 July 1619 in the church at Jamestown. Itself based on the English Parliament as a model, it became the model followed by all succeeding British colonies including Australia. The colonial assembly next in age to Virginia's is that of Bermuda established in 1620. In the _Journals of the House of Burgesses_, the names of the Burgesses for the 1619 Assembly are arranged by the cities and plantations they represented. In the Journal of the second Assembly that is extant, 1623/24, for the first and only time, the plantations are grouped under the corporations of which they were a part, except Eastern Shore, which, as has been noted, was a separate entity. In 1621, a charter from the Company confirmed former grants and provided "that the Governor should call the General Assembly once a year, and initiate the policy of the form of government, laws, customs, manner of trial and other administration of justice used in England." Governor Wyatt at the same time was ordered to make arrangements for "dividing the colony into cities, boroughs, etc., ... and to appoint proper times for administration ... and law suits." William Stith in his _History of Virginia_ states: "Inferior courts were therefore in the beginning of the year 1621 appointed in convenient places to relieve the Governor and Council of the vast burthen of business and to render justice more cheap and accessible. This was the original and foundation of our County Courts, although the country was not yet laid off in counties." The General Assembly of 1623/24 provided "that there shall be courts kept once a month in the corporations of Charles City and Elizabeth City for the deciding of suits and controversies not exceeding the value of one hundred pounds of tobacco and for punishing of petty offenses." As a consequence of this act, the question of the metes and bounds of these corporations, Charles City, Henrico, Elizabeth City and James City, became important, since suits must perforce be instituted in the court having jurisdiction over that particular area. Mr. Nathaniel C. Hale, in his interesting book on William Claiborne called _Virginia Venturer_, shows that William Claiborne in 1621, was appointed a surveyor for the colony and comments that heretofore boundaries of land had been located with ungraduated mariners' compasses and described by careless references to natural limits.