Before we proceed to develope the practice in regard to resurveys, and the various other particulars which remain to be examined, it will be proper to notice such matters as were peculiar to grants of Manors, and to give some account of those lands which were either appropriated in fact to the use of the Proprietary by that denomination, or provisionally set apart by his direction by the name of Reserves. In regard to these last I shall just remark, for the present, that the Proprietary, as absolute lord and owner of the soil, assumed the right of reserving for his own use such tracts or quantities of land as he thought proper. The exercise of this privilege, however, had not always for its end the actual appropriation of the lands in question to the use of the Proprietary, but served indirectly to confine surveys and settlements to those parts of the Province in which it was desired they should take place, and in particular to keep them sufficiently separated from the districts still occupied by the different tribes of Indians with which the colony was surrounded. Accordingly when a reserve had been laid with either of those views and had answered its purpose, it was taken off, and surveys permitted on those lands as elsewhere. To enumerate all the reserves which were laid under the Proprietary government, with their respective times of duration, would be a task of some difficulty and of no great use. It is not even proposed to give a list of all the Manors which were from time to time erected, many of these having been, as the records term it, let fall at very early periods, so that no trace probably remains of them in the quarters in which they existed; a few references however will be given in each case and such Manors and reserves as remained in the hands of the Proprietary at the time of the revolution will in a succeeding part of this work claim particular notice, as composing a distinct branch of the property to which the State of Maryland then succeeded, and the disposition of which formed and still forms the principal object of the Land Office establishment.     Reserves, as has been stated, were, simply, parcels of land on which the execution of Warrants was interdicted. They were sometimes however marked out by actual surveys in the name of the Proprietary, but were more generally only designated in the first instance by some adequate description. Of Manors there were three kinds, distinct at least in their circumstances; viz, those erected in the name and for the use of the Lord Proprietary, and for which, as a man does not convey to himself, grants or patents, did not pass; those which were erected by the special orders of the Proprietary for the benefit of his relations, &c. with particular conditions and privileges; and those which assumed that name, agreeably Source: John Kilty. Land Holder's Assistant and Land Office Guide. Baltimore: G. Dobbin & Murphy, 1808. MSA L 25529.