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426 Correspondence of Governor Sharpe.
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Letter Bk. III
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Days with a negative & their Objections in writing to many
Parts of it. A Conference was afterwards agreed on by both
Houses & after a warm Engagement between the Conferees
that lasted above a week the principal Obstacles were removed
& the Bill assented to. The Burgesses had at first as I before
hinted insisted that all His Ldp's mannour & Reserved Lands
should be made liable to the Tax & none exempted but such
as remain still vacant; but to give you a clear Idea of what is
meant by Mannour, Reserved & Vacant Lands it will perhaps
be necessary to inform you that at times the Lords Proprietaries
or their Governors have on an Appearance of Copper or other
Ores or on Account of the extraordinary Fertility of the Soil or
their Contiguity to Towns or His Ldp's Mannour's ordered a
Reserve to be entered on certain Tracts of Land, or in other
words forbad those Officers who are impowered to sell grant
or make away such Tracts on any Consideration whatever;
these differ from the Mannour Lands in this that the latter are
regularly & properly surveyed & the Description & Bounds of
them entered in the publick Records, but the Reserved Lands
have never been surveyed or laid out, are not distinguished or
known by proper Names as the Mannours are but are in the
Records described only in general Terms or words" as all the
Land that lies between such & such Hills or Rivers or between
two Roads for its Breadth & so many Miles for its Length &c"
however parts or Parcells of these Reserves are leased & His
Ldp's Agent receives Rent for the same as he does for those parts
of the Mannours that are let to Tenants. Lands that are unoc-
cupied or have never been taken up but are by His Ldp's
Land Officers to be sold to any that will purchase them at the
Common Rates are called Vacant Lands, from such His Ldp
receives no immediate Revenue & Profit, neither did our
Assembly offer to burthen them tho the Pensilvanians had
endeavoured to make their Proprietaries vacant Lands liable
to the Tax that was proposed to be laid in that Province.
Upon the Conference that I have already mentioned the Lower
House receeded from what they had at first insisted on so far,
that instead of Taxing All His Ldp's Reserved Lands they
agreed that only those Parts of them that are actually leased
out & pay Rent to His Ldp shall be made liable & that the
Rest shall be deemed vacant & exempted Accordingly, but the
whole mannours according to the true Contents of each
whether tenanted or unoccupied are subjected to the payment
of the Tax, in the same manner & form that the Inhabitants'
Lands are, I think the Annual Rents that His Ldp receives
from such Parts of his mannour & Reserved Lands as are
leased amount to about £ 800/600, & it is supposed that His Ldp's
Proportion of the Tax imposed will in the five years for which
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