Old planters were given special exemption from public service, "they and theire posteritie," while Burgesses were rendered exempt from seizure during Assembly time. "Persones of qualitie" when found delinquent, it was stated, could be imprisoned if not fit to take corporal punishment. It is of note that service to the Governor, or the public, was made contingent on Assembly consent. Of particular interest, too, was the action on the principle of taxation. It was bold, indeed, at this time for the Assembly to declare that;
The Governor shall not laye any taxes or impositiones uppon the Colony, theire landes or comodities otherwi[se] then by the awthoritie of the Generall Assemblie, to be levied and imployed as the saide Assembly shall appoint.
This was an early word on taxation, but it was to be far from the last word in the next century and a half.
[The Spread of Settlement—1607 to 1624]
By 1624 the Colony had grown from a single settlement at Jamestown to a series of communities along the James River and on the Eastern Shore. Until 1611 only Jamestown had proven lasting. In this fourth year, however, Kecoughtan (Elizabeth City) was established on a permanent basis and Henrico was laid out. In 1613 the fourth of the Company settlements was established at Bermuda which was to become Charles City. For five years the center of population passed up river. The area in the "Curls" of the James for a time was the preferred location. It looked as if even the seat of government would be moved here where much official business was transacted. In 1616 John Rolfe listed 6 settlements and according to his report, some 68 per cent of the residents were in the Henrico-Bermuda area.
Decline set in, in the upriver settlements, however, and the focus returned again to the Jamestown area, aided, it seems, by the efforts of Governor Samuel Argall. It was this 1617-19 period, too, that saw the beginning of particular plantations which did much to populate the James River basin as far as the falls. In 1619 at the time of the Assembly meeting, there were eleven localities, or communities, that sent representatives to Jamestown. Plantations continued to multiply until the destruction of the massacre temporarily rolled back the number. For a time the settlements were reduced to, perhaps, a dozen. Even the massacre, however, could not long hold back what was becoming a tide. The reoccupation of abandoned areas and the utilization of new land was quickly the order of the day. In 1625 a total of 27 areas or communities were reported. In this surge of expansion the center of population now passed again from Jamestown and rested in the lower areas of the James. In 1624 and 1625 Elizabeth City was indeed Virginia's most populous community. In fact, early in 1625 the Elizabeth City group (Kecoughtan, Buckroe, Newport News, etc.) had a greater population than did all of the plantations above Jamestown. At this point "James Citty" and the Island stood second with a population of 175 while Elizabeth City alone had about 350.
The story of Virginia's first seventeen years was written all along the banks of the James and much of it in the towns, forts, and plantations that grew here. Each of them has an individual story and together they give much of the story of Virginia's early years.