iding hand of the Company was missed by the freedmen after the
revoking of the charter, for the Governors seem to have left them to
shift for themselves. Yet this fact did not prevent many from forging
ahead, acquiring land, and in some cases positions of trust in the
Government itself. In Hotten's _Immigrants_ is published a muster roll
for the year 1624 of all the settlers in Virginia, in which servants are
carefully distinguished from freemen.[4-46] By following, as well as the
imperfect records of the period permit, the after careers of the former,
it is possible to determine with a fair degree of accuracy to what
extent the small farmer class at this period was recruited from persons
coming to the colony under terms of indenture.

Of the forty-four Burgesses who sat in the Assembly of 1629, no less
than seven--John Harris, William Allen, William Popleton, Anthony
Pagett, Richard Townsend, Adam Thoroughgood and Lionell Rowlston--were
listed as servants in the muster of 1624.[4-47] Thus some sixteen per
cent of this important body, the Virginia House of Commons, at this time
was made up of men who five years previously had been working out their
passage money. Among the thirty-nine members of the House of 1632, six
appear as servants in the muster--Thomas Barnett, Adam Thoroughgood,
Lionell Rowlston, Thomas Crump, Roger Webster and Robert Scotchmon.
Whether there were other members who came over under terms of indenture
but secured their freedom before 1624, we have no means of determining.

The author of _Virginia's Cure_, published in 1662, asserted that the
Burgesses "were usual such as went over as servants thither; and though
by time, and industry, they may have obtained competent estates, yet by
reason of their poor and mean condition, were unskilful in judging of a
good estate, either of church or Commonwealth."[4-48] This statement is
a gross exaggeration both as to the composition of the Burgesses and
their abilities. Instances of the election of freedmen to the House,
fairly frequent in the early years of the colony, became rarer as the
century advanced and the field of selection widened. Yet in the Assembly
of 1652, of the thirty-five members, eight or nine appear on the patent
rolls as headrights brought over by others.[4-49] It is evident that
even so late as the middle of the century the door of opportunity was
still open to the freedmen.

In the absence of a complete census for the decades after 1624,