and the yearly rent of two hundred pounds of tobacco, per hundred acres, hereby ratifying, confirming and allowing what you shall act pursuant hereunto as our own act and deed. To have, hold and enjoy the powers granted you by this commission, with all such fees, benefitts and perquisites as shall grow due to you for executing the same, during our pleasure and noe longer. Given under our hand and lesser seale at armes, this 19th day of March, 1683."     LIBER R. R. R. fol. 71. ¾     Without pretending, to exhibit all the instructions given from time to time on this subject, I shall observe that it became by degrees the general system of the successive proprietaries, to let out their manors and reserved lands on leases, as well for lives as for years, until it was at length thought expedient to make sale of them, for which purpose several orders and commissions were issued in the latter period of the proprietary government, and in particular a commission from Frederick lord Baltimore, to Horatio Sharpe, Daniel Dulany, and John Morton Jordan, Esquires, bearing date in January 1766, under which and the instructions accompanying and following them some sales were effected. A great quantity of lands, however, remained on lease, and the plan of disposing entirely of the manors and reserves seems to have been laid aside, as, many leases were renewed, and I believe new ones granted, subsequent to the beforementioned instructions.¾The instruments of lease were ulteriorly, not executed or recorded in the land office. The business of leases was under the direction of the governor and the receiver general, assisted by the stewards of the manors and reserves, whose duty it was to keep the last mentioned officer informed of all occurrences affecting his lordship's interest within their spheres of inspection. Such further notice as this subject may require, will appear in our account of the proprietary's revenue system, to which, in fact, it properly belongs.