first day of August in the fortieth year of his Lordships Dominion over Maryland in the year of our Lord God 1671.     COUNCIL BOOK, C.B. fol. 89.   CHAPTER IV.   ORIGIN OF THE LAND OFFICE ESTABLISHMENT, AND EARLY PROCEEDINGS IN LAND AFFAIRS.     ALTHOUGH it is certain that Mr. Leonard Calvert came out originally with some authority by Commission from the Proprietary for the government of the proposed Colony, and though some of the first adventurers were designated as his immediate (a) assistants in that task, the records now in being afford no evidence of any formal establishments until three or four years had elapsed from the time of the first emigration. A complete provision for the management of public affairs seems to have been aimed at soon after the publication of the Conditions of Plantation of 1636. Our present enquiry, however, must be confined to those offices or establishments which were charged with the management of Land affairs. The promises to the first adventurers could not, of course, be realized until lands were procured, and might be explored and surveyed with safety. When this period arrived, it became necessary to settle the manner in which the persons demanding grants of land should exhibit and substantiate their claims, and also to provide for the locating, surveying, and bounding the several quantities of land so claimed, with the methods of authenticating the surveys, and of passing complete titles by grant or Letters Patent under the great seal of the Province. The document first to be noticed as having relation to this subject is the Commission of Mr. Leonard Calvert as Lieutenant General or Governor of the Province, dated the 15th day of April 1637. Among other powers and trusts not connected with the objects of our enquiry, the Governor was by this Commission made Keeper of the great seal, with power, in the proprietary's name, to pass and grant under the said seal such quantities of land, (a)     It appears by a grant to Thomas Cornwalleys Esq. of the Manor of West St. Mary's in 1640, (Liber No. 1, fol. 97) that the land so granted was part of 4000 acres for which Capt. Henry Fleete had agreed with the Governor and Commissioners of Maryland in the year 1634, the second year of the Colony. This is the only evidence which I have found of the original Commission for commencing the settlement of Maryland, but it is sufficient. Source: John Kilty. Land Holder's Assistant and Land Office Guide. Baltimore: G. Dobbin & Murphy, 1808. MSA L 25529.