CUNNINGHAM v. BROWNING.

of the contracting parties; because of the purchasers failing to
Comply with the conditions of plantation on their part; or the
lands which had been so disposed of by the proprietary were
returned to him by forfeiture or escheat.

By several proclamations of the proprietary, the first of which
was published in November 1725, it was made an express condi-
tion of all future contracts between himself and the purchasers of
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
discovery 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 of the certificate, (p) This
may be regarded as a kind of escheat; and the power of the pro-
prietary, 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.(q)

But where, after the whole legal estate in fee simple had passed
out of the proprietary, the individual owner had, by being con-
victed of a crime, forfeited his estate; or where the lands which
bad 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.(r) The inquests in all such cases, although there
was at one time an escheator,(s) were ordered to be taken here, as

(p) Land Ho. Ass. 319,462, 469; 1705, ch. 88, s. 10.—(g) Land Ho. Ass. 186;
Gilb. Exch. 39 Chal. Opin. Em. Law, 150—(r) Land Ho. Ass. 154, 245.—(s) Land
Ho. Ass. 224.