Given the fact that the existing government of Virginia was technically extra-legal, it’s a little amusing to think that they themselves felt the need to conduct extra-legal activities of their own. A more cynical mind would think that they were hedging their bets, so that if anything Revolutionary were to come up and the British started rounding up people, they could say, “That wasn’t us…it was that Virginia Convention crowd!”
A more cynical mind would think that. Heh.
But the various conventions, while not having large agendas, did have important ones, and they managed to help the colony get their act together and improve their overall effectiveness during the Revolution.