" to a patent for such land, in fee simple, unless the " chancellor, upon hearing on any caveat to the same " should otherwise determine, " and that such certificate and patent " should be recorded among the records of the land office:" it provided further that certificates returned at any time before the first of January 1787, by any person who had been appointed by the intendant to survey the said lands should be received by the examiner general, and be of the same validity as if executed and returned by the surveyor of the county. The time for these returns was afterwards extended by several acts, the last of which (November 1802, ch. 7) made the certificates in question receivable up to the first of November 1803, and no longer.     By other provisions of this act the governor and council were authorised to appoint as many additional surveyors as they should think proper to complete these surveys, whose certificates were to be received in like manner as those of the surveyors appointed by the intendant. Caveats were permitted for six months from the date of return, and the chancellor was to hear and determine on them upon the principles governing in other cases. Lands already patented were to be passed by deed, executed by the chancellor, upon the payment of the purchase money, and upon a certificate of sale having lain six months in the land office;¾the deed to be prepared by the party, and, when executed and delivered by the chancellor, to be recorded, within six months, in the office of the general court, or the court of the county in which the purchaser resided, or should have made the purchase. It is proper here to mention that, previous to these regulations, the commissioners had in many instances executed deeds of conveyance to the purchasers of confiscated property, which being afterwards deemed inoperative, it has been provided by a late act (1805 ch. 99) that persons holding and claiming lands in virtue of such deeds, and producing satisfactory proof of their equitable titles, shall receive deeds executed as aforesaid by the chancellor, which being recorded among the records of the county court where the lands lie, are valid and effectual to transfer the right title and claim of any British subject, or the right of the state created by any former act of assembly, to such lands.     The last section of the act of 1785, vested ample powers in the chancellor for the adjustment of all disputes and questions that might arise between different purchasers of the aforesaid property, or between such purchasers and other persons, relative to the same. He was authorised by this section, before the title of the state should be granted or conveyed, to determine disputes between purchasers, in a summary way; and for his information, to cause surveys to be