CUNNINGHAM v. BROWNING.—1 BLAND. 287

his lands, that the purchaser should, after the survey, pay the
whole purchase money and take out a patent within two years
from the date of the warrant; or, on his failing to do so, he should
forfeit the imperfect title he had so acquired, if any one should
thereafter discover the fact, and take out a warrant, and obtain
a patent thereon for the same land; who as a reward for his dis-
covery was allowed a warrant on the payment, at the time, of one-
tenth of the amount of the composition money then due, and the
remaining nine-tenths on the return or the certificate: Land Ho.
Ass. 319, 462, 469; 1795, eh. 88, s. 10. This may be regarded as a
kind of escheat; and the power of the Proprietary, in such cases,
to make a new disposition of the land as being thus, according to
the terms of the contract, restored to him by operation of law
without any inquest of office whatever; for the contract between
the Proprietary and the then immediate purchaser and holder,
being upon record, was considered as equivalent to an inquest of
office. Land Ho. Ass. 186; Gilb. Exch. 89; 1 Chal. Opm. Em. Law,
150.

But where, after the whole legal estate, in fee simple had passed
out of the Proprietary, the individual owner had, by being con-
Ticted of a crime, forfeited his estate; or where the lands which
had been so granted had, by the death of the owner intestate and
without heirs, escheated, it seems to have been deemed necessary,
during the earlier periods of the Proprietary government, here, as
in England, to have the fact of such title and of the nature and
extent of the lands ascertained by an inquest of office before the
same lands could be again disposed of by the Proprietary. The
first settlers being, for the most part, poor adventurers, it often
happened, that they died intestate without leaving any known
heirs: and, therefore it was. that, for many years after the settle-
ment of the country, cases of escheat for want of heirs were so very
frequent. Land Ho. Ass. 154, 245. The inquests in all such cases,
although there was at one time an escheator, Land Ho. Ass. 224;
were ordered to be taken here, as * in England, by a writ 307
of mandamus, or a diem clausit extremum, directed to the
sheriff of the county in which the lands lay, upon the return of
which, as a reward to the discoverer, at whose instance the man-
damus had been issued, he was allowed to have the pre-emption of
the land so escheated at two-thirds of its value, or that it should
be sold, and one-third of the proceeds of sale paid to him. Land
Ho. Ass. 102, 114, 174, 194, 261, 283, 319; Lord Proprietary v. Jen-
ings, 1 H. & McH. 119; Kilt. Rep.; 14 Ed. 3, c. 8, & 8 H. 6, c. 1G;
Land Records, lib. C. B. 13, &v.; Chan. Pro. lib. C. D. 78; lib. P.
L. fol 90; lib. J R. fol. 242, dec.

But, in that inverval of time, between the years 1692 and 1715,
when the government of the Province was taken into the hands of
the king, although the Proprietary's right of soil was admitted, it