The former Clerk to the Parliament accounts the historic timeline of Bermuda’s Parliament to the present day.
Mr James E. Smith,
MA, in Hamilton. Mr Smith was the Clerk to the Parliament of Bermuda from 1990 to 1996.
Opening of Bermuda’s first Parliament On 1 August 1620, Governor Nathaniel Butler – who assumed office in 1619 – responded to explicit instructions from the Somers Island Company by convening Bermuda’s first Parliament at the church (later called St. Peter’s Church) in the town of St. George, the site of the colony’s first settlement. The Parliament of Virginia had met in the previous year, but after the American colonies had achieved their independence from Great Britain in 1783, Bermuda acquired the distinction of possessing the oldest Legislature in the Commonwealth outside the British Isles, whose Parliament, along with those of the Isle of Man and Iceland, predated Bermuda’s by several hundred years. The Parliament of 1620
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consisted of the governor and an appointed council, a secretary (who
divided by Richard Norwood’s first survey of the islands, which he had carried out during the tenure of Governor Daniel Tucker. The representatives on this occasion were selected by “voice vote” (open balloting) by male property owners.
Mr James Smith
In later years, St. George’s became the ninth tribe. Another development was that the elected representatives from the different tribes and the council (with the governor in attendance) met separately. The elected
also served as the Speaker), the Bailiffs of the tribes (later called parishes), “such of the Clergie as the Governor thinks most fit” and 16 elected male representatives, two from each of the eight tribes into which the colony had been
representatives (the forerunner of the present House of Assembly) were at liberty to pass legislation on their own initiative, but such legislation was not to conflict with the laws of England and could be vetoed by the governor and the council. On the other hand, the governor and the council, who were entrusted with the executive