xxxvi       Early Maryland County Courts.


          frequently followed, with the result that the county court proceedings •
          Charles, Kent and Somerset are filled with papers affecting titles to land, prior
          to the date when recording became obligatory. In the case of Talbot County,
          however, land papers are recorded in separate libers, and have not been printed
          with these court minutes.
            During the first two or three decades after the settlement, conveyances of
          land were usually made by assignment on the back of the original patent issued
          to the patentee, and not infrequently reassignments were made in the same way
          upon the same patent. The patent thus passed from hand to hand until some
          purchases decided for safety to make his ownership a matter of record by enroll
          ment in one of the courts, or where only a part of the land patented was disposed
          of, and it was inadvisable for the former owner of the whole tract to part with
          the patent by assignment, and a new conveyance became necessary. The record
          ing in court of transfers of land was not a custom brought by the settlers from
          England, for land deeds were recorded there in only a few isolated localities: but
          it was a device adopted by the settlers, made necessary by the frequent sub
          division and sale of land granted by a single patent.
            In Kent and Charles counties in the fifties and early sixties the usual form of
          land conveyance was by short paper of some fifteen or sixteen lines giving
          merely the name of the tract, its acreage and general location, but without
          describing in detail the metes and bounds This is sometimes referred to by
          the recording clerk as a “bill of sale “, but the same term was also often applied
          to a more lengthy deed running to as much as a hundred and fifty lines or more,
          which came into more general use in the next decade. We also find mortgages
          and leases recorded. The law provided that a special fee known as the aliena
          tion fee be paid to the Proprietary whenever land was conveyed from one per
          son to another. The payment of these alienation fees was frequently recorded
          in the county courts.
            There was of course a rapid increase in the number of land conveyances
          as the population increased and earlier settlers began to divide up their land
          and sell speculative holdings to new arrivals. The frequent delay of those
          entitled to land, due them under headright claims, to apply for patents, resulted
          in Governor Fendall, April 13, 1658, issuing a proclamation that thereafter
          all demands for land be entered within a month of the arrival of the headright
          (Arch. Md. liv, 127-128). The Kent records show occasional entries of
          headrights, although these were usually recorded at St. Mary's, where, except
          for a brief period, patents were always issued. An act passed in 1654, however,
          while the Parliamentary commissioners governed, permitted those who entered
          the Province but refused to take the oath of fidelity to the Proprietary, to
          claim their lands and enter rights in the court of the county where is was
          located, and to enter at the same time “a caveat” for it (Arch. Md. i, 348).
          At least seven such caveats entered under this act are recorded, six in Kent and
          one in Charles County (p. 94; Arch. Md. liv, 39, 52, 126, 127, 141, 163). Two
          instances are recorded of the sale and delivery of land with livery of seizin. In
          a Charles County deed, dated July 12, 1664, from Daniel Johnson to William
          Barton, Jr., it is recited that the land was “sould and delivered with turf and