History of public land law development

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36 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Perhaps the best summary of the faults of the Virginia land system of 1697-one that would do for Virginia throughout the entire colonial period, as well as for most other Colonies-is that prepared for the Board of Trade by John Locke and James Blair: The ancient Encouragement of 50 Acres of land per poll designed and ordered by the King upon the first seating of the Country, for all that should come and settle there, has been strangely perverted, and frustrated. 1. by granting the 50 Acres of every Servant to his Master that buys him. 2. by granting 50 acres to every Seaman, and that for every time he adventures himself into the Country, tho' he Never stays, nor settles there. 3. By yet a greater and constant abuse at the Secretaries Office, where the Clerks sell to any man Rights for as much land as he pleases at the rate of five shillings, or less for every right, that is every 50 acres. By this trick the great men of the Country have 20, 25, or 30 thousand Acres of Land in their hands, and there is hardly any left for the poor People to take upp, except they will goe beyond the inhabitants much higher up than the Rivers are navigable, and out of the way of all business. News that servants could not obtain head-rights when freed had a discouraging effect. People who otherwise might have been willing to emigrate were now "not so willing to go there as formerly" because their options were "to hire and pay rent for lands or to go to the utmost bounds of the Colony for land exposed to danger, and often the occasion of war with the Indians."7 Virginia attempted to end abuses of the headright system by a comprehensive law of 1705 which provided that only one head-right could be gained for the importation of a single person and denied headrights to transients not settled on land. The measure also set a limit of 4,000 acres on the amount of land to be conveyed in any patent and declared that lands not improved within 3 years were to escheat to the Crown. Head-rights were to be given for every "Christian," male or female of whatever age.8 7 Kammen, loc. cit., pp. 143, 154-55. 8Hening, Statutes, III, 304. Though there is evidence that the British Government also tried to prevent misuse of the granting process in favor of the freedmen and other immigrants, it was quite unsuccessful. Colonial officials and other influential people used every possible device to add to their possessions, and by the time British orders to limit grants were received and supported, it was too late.9 The English authorities also tried to make sure that indentured servants would receive headrights when their term of service expired, but such requirements were commonly evaded. The freedmen found they had to buy land on long-term credit or rent it. Although Virginia had extensive areas of undeveloped land, tenancy appeared early on the large estates of the group that was emerging as the aristocracy. In addition to limiting the use of headrights, the Act of 1705 authorized the sale of public lands at 5 shillings for each 50 acres, thus making it possible, despite the 4,000-acre maximum for each patent, for persons with means to gain legitimately what before had been obtained through subterfuge. There followed what Professor Abernethy has called the "era of prodigal grants" in which estates running into the hundreds of thousands of acres were created. Among these large estates were the 179,440-acre holding of William Byrd, the 300,000 acres acquired by Robert "King" Carter, the 100,000-acre grant on the Greenbrier River to John Robinson, the 130,000-acre grant that fell to William Beverley, and the 86,650-acre estate of 9 Manning C. Voorhis, "Crown Versus Council in the Virginia Land Policy," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Ill (October 1946), 499 f.; Philip Alexander Bruce, Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols.; New York, 1896); Curtis Nettels, Roots of American Civilization (New York, 1938), passim; Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America (New York, 1946), pp. 394 ff.