INTRODUCTION ix

altered as the province grew. In 1683 rewards for transporting settlers
ceased, and thenceforth land was granted only upon currency payments.¹
In exceptional instances grants were made on special terms. To carry the
grants into effect, warrants were issued in the province to a surveyor gen-
eral for laying out the lands taken up, that officer and his deputies made the
surveys and returned certificates of their findings, and, based upon these,
patents signed by the governor, under the seal of the lord proprietary, were
prepared and issued. All the business relating to grants, patents, and
escheats, was until 1680 managed by the governor and his council, or the
secretary of the province, with the assistance of the surveyor general, and in
1680 the land office, one of the most important institutions of the province,
was set up. Its chief officer was denominated, first, a register of the office,
and, after 1715, a judge and register, who appointed a chief clerk. These
officials figure conspicuously in this and all other legal records of the late
seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. A land council presided over
the affairs of the office from 1684 to 1689, while the governor was on a
voyage to England. In 1746 two judges and registers were appointed to
hold office jointly, but that is subsequent to the period with which this book
is concerned.

3. THE SETTLERS OF THE PROVINCE: SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUND

For the original settlement, about two hundred people ventured out
from England, and as the enterprise proved successful more and more came,
until at the end of the seventeenth century when the present record was
opened there were in Maryland about 30,000 people in all, including a
large number of white servants and 3,000 negroes. Among the whites there
were then about 3,000 Quakers and a comparatively small number of Ro-
man Catholics; the Church of England claimed most of the remainder.²
At this time the increase of population was slow, and so continued for some
years, but by the year 1732, three years after the discontinuing of this
record, the number had trebled, reaching the total of 96,000, of which 2 i,ooo
were negroes.³ Some of the whites came from countries other than Eng-
land, but not to form a large fraction of the whole; a list of persons and
families naturalized by act of assembly * seems to indicate that immigrants
of other than English blood were comparatively few. Those who became
landholders were naturalized, usually,⁵ before 1689, by act of assembly, and
after that year, always by act of assembly; and the list of those naturalized

¹ C. P. Gould, " Land System in Maryland," Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies in Hist. & Pol.
Science, ser. 31, no. i.

² Henry F. Thompson, " Maryland at the End of the Seventeenth Century," Maryland
Historical Magazine, II, 164. s Archives, XXXVII, 588.

⁴ Bacon, Laws of Maryland, Index to Private, Parochial, and Town Laws.
= Post, pp. 319, 328.