MIGRATION AND THE ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH ATLANTIC WORLD, Alison Games, Harvard Uni. Press, 1999 Page 111 ............... Another successful early arrival was Rice Hooe of Shirley Hundred, who was in Virginia as early as 1624. [32] When Hooe testified in court in 1625, he was given no honorific by the clerk, neither Mr. nor planter nor gentleman, yet he served as a burgess in addition to filling other important local roles: in 1639 he was appointed to view th tobacco crop, and he served as a county commissioner. [33] Hooe was typical of pre-1635 residents who garnered offices: no evidence has survived to suggest that he had status proffered by gentle birth. Those who arrived in Virginia a mere decade later in the 1630s, however, needed rather different characteristics to achieve high colonial offices. For newcomers in 1635 who acquired colonial offices later, wealth and privilege were crucial prerequistes. Robert Evelin, for example, was described as a gentleman in 1634, and by 1637 he had been appointed to the Council at the request of the King. [34] Humphrey Higginson was another well-placed young man who was called gentleman in his first land patent in 1637. His first known office was an appointment to inspect tobacco in James City County in 1639. Only six years after his arrival, he was appointed by the king to the Council, and he served on the Council intermittently through 1655, after which he apparently returned to England. [35] notes: [32] McIlwaine, ed., COUNCIL MINUTES, 4 April 1625, p. 51. [33] List of viewers of the tobacco crop, 1639, VMHB5 (1897): 119-123; Beverley Fleet, CHARLES CITY COUNTY ORDERS 1655-1658 Abstracts (Richmond, 1941), p.16 [34] CO 1/8, ff. 21-22; CO 1/9, item 37, pp. 95-96, PRO. [35] Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1915), v. 1, p.112. Page 112 .............. But however reluctantly some planters held colonial offices, for many of the passengers in 1635, small local offices were the only recognition of their colonial accomplishments. The men who held local positions differed from those who gained colony office in their relative youth and in their lack of social distinction. Thirty-seven men were elected or appointed to local positions, including constable, sheriff, vestryman, justice of the peace, viewer of the tobacco crop, or juror. Except for those men who also held positions on the Council, none were called gentlemen. They were all younger by an average of three to five years when they reached the colony than were the successful men profiled in Table 4.1. Eight of these men had reached the colony as servants in 1635. Freed from service sometime after 1640, they could not hope to replicate the political success of Captain Richard Townshend. Instead, they turned their energy toward acquiring lan! d and cultivating tobacco. The small local positions they held reflected that their political universe rested in the county. Page 114 ............. In Virginia, then, the pattern in place by the late 1630s suggests that servants who reached the colony in 1635 and survived to their freedom would find it difficult, if not impossible, to secure the major colonial offices that had been available to humble newcomers a decade of two earlier. The ascent was harder in Virginia by the 1640s. Even in a decade marked by demographic uncertaintly, indigenous attack, and political upheaval, it was not easy for newcomers to have a significant political impact on the colony. The experiences of the 241 travelers of 1635, both old residents and newcomers, both servants and gentleman, suggest a trend in Virginia toward greater restriction in the availability of offices. Only a decade earlier former servants could gain important colony offices: by the 1630s, these opportunities were negligible, at least for the men in this sample. [Comment: The author is talking VIRGINIA only, she has further studies on the re! st of the English Atlantic World not included here.]