200
| LAND-HOLDER'S ASSISTANT.
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grants shall and doe extend to ten in the hundred, over or
under, and noe more.
R. R. B. folio 1.
N.B. No particular proclamation is found to have been issued in
consequence of this advice, but the 5th article of the instructions to the land
Council is apparently grounded upon it.
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" Ordered by the right honourable the lord Proprietary
that the following proclamation issue:
" MARYLAND, ss.
" BALTIMORE.
" By the right honourable the lord proprietary,
" A PROCLAMATION.
" Whereas several of our tenants by colour of grants,
surveys or otherwise, hold larger quantities of land than are
mentioned in such grants or surveys or were intended to be
granted to or surveyed for them, or those under whom they claime,
for which surplus lands they or those whose estates they have,
never paid any manner of consideration, to the great deceipt
and prejudice of us and the hindrance and discouragement of
others who would have taken up and improved such surplus
lands, and whereas all the measures which have hitherto been
taken to prevail on the possessors or holders of such surplus lands
to pay for and take out patents or grants to invest themselves
with estates of inheritance in them (as in common justice and
prudence they ought to have done) have proved ineffectual,
and the said possessors or holders have unjustly withheld and
still withhold the said surplus lands under a vain and
groundless pretence that the words more or less in their grants or
surveys entitle them to great quantities of land which they or
those under whom they claim never bought or paid for,
which practice is in itself so manifestly unjust and so
injurious to us and the province by hindering the peopleing and
improvement thereof, that we are determined not much longer
to indure it but to assert our own just right with all
convenient speed, either by vacating the grants containing such
surplus as fraudulently obtained, or otherwise, as the case may
require, which we had long since done had we not been
restrained by the greatest tenderness and regard for the quiet
and welfare of our tenants, and the hopes we entertained that
they would of their own accord have taken the proper steps
to have done us justice and secure to themselves and their
posterity indefeazable estates upon very easy terms in the surplus
lands by them possessed; to the end therefore that no
person who is possessed off or holds any surplus land by colour
of any grant, survey or otherwise and for which the consideration
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