The Virginia Company of London sent its colonists to the New World without even announcing the leaders in advance. When the Susan Constant, GodSpeed, and Discovery finally reached the James River, Captain Newport opened the sealed envelope with the London Company's instructions - and had to release Captain John Smith from confinement, so the "prisoner" could take his place on the resident council...
By 1617 the Virginia colony had been divided into the Incorporations of Henricus, Charles City, James City, and Kecoughtan.
In 1618 King James I granted the Third Charter with provisions for elected representatives to help govern the colony. In 1619 the eleven small settlements within the four Incorporations elected representatives to a General Assembly. [There were also "particular plantations" outside the direct control of the London Company. The first General Assembly rejected representatives that were elected from Martin's Brandon, in today's Prince George county, because that particular plantation had highlighted that they were governed by separate rules.]
Starting in 1619 the General Assembly handled executive, legislative, and judicial issues. It created the first courts to handle small lawsuits in 1621, but the population increase - to about 5,000 colonists in 1634 - caused the administrative workload to become a hassle. In 1634 the General Assembly chartered eight shires, which were called "counties" afterwards.
The first eight counties were the four existing Incorporations (Henrico, Charles City, James City, and Elizabeth City - which replaced the "heathen" name of Kecoughtan) plus four new areas: Accomack, Charles River, Warrosquyoake, and Warwick River. The boundaries of the eight counties were drawn so most colonists could reach their county court sessions, where justices dealt with property issues and criminal accusations, in one day. County boundaries would be defined and revised for many reasons until the last county (Dickenson) was created in 1880, but the primary basis for drawing Virginia's county boundaries was to make the courts accessible.
Until 1624, the colony of Virginia was a business managed by the equivalent of a plant manager with a local oversight board. The company's "Board of Directors" was the members of the London Company in England.
Management direction from that distance was weak, and conflict among members of the council in Jamestown was intense at times. In the early days of Jamestown, one local member of the council was executed as a Spanish spy and John Smith was threatened with execution by his Council rivals. Recently, excavations at the original fort have revealed the first clear evidence of an Englishman murdered by another in the colony.
To attract settlers after the "starving time" in 1609-10 and the failure of the colony to thrive, the London Company offered potential investors a great deal of flexibility in creating new settlements. Shiploads of settlers were sent to Virginia to create largely self-sufficient "hundreds." The name reflected the anticipated number of new settlers required to establish a permanent community. These new "hundreds" were required to be at least several miles from any existing community, and "Bermuda Hundred" became a famous place name on the James River during the Civil War.
In 1619, representatives from the separate communities assembled to form the first House of Burgesses, another attempt by the London Company to make the colony attractive to new investors and settlers. In 1624, King James I took official control of the colony by revoking the company charter. Virginia was ruled as a royal colony of the king (as opposed to a proprietary colony, where authority was granted to an individual such as William Penn or Lord Calvert) until the American Revolution.
The House of Burgesses first created official local governmental units 1634. The decision reflected the population growth of the colony, which created a need for official decisions that were local and not of concern to the entire House (or appropriate to delay until the next session of the House of Burgesses). The local units of government were called "shires" only in the original act. Ever since, they have been described as "counties."