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456 BALTIMORE v. McKIM.
property belonging to individuals in separate parcels, (b) The
charter of Maryland not only vested the right of soil in the Lord
Proprietary, but it also clothed him with certain political and regal
powers within his province; and hence, in establishing a Land
Office, and laying down rules for the sale of the great body of his
real estate, he followed, in many respects, the forms which had been
adopted in England for the purpose of preventing fraud and impo-
sition in obtaining grants of property from the king; and all grants
of land here were accordingly required to pass under the supervi-
sion of the Chancellor; and to be attested by the great seal of
which he was the keeper. If the rules of the office were complied
with, and the purchase money paid, a grant for the land was
issued as of course, otherwise not. (c) Among the earliest acts of
the Provincial Legislature was one, which declared it to be illegal
for any individual to purchase lands of the Indians to the prejudice
of the rights of the Lord Proprietary, (d)
The mode of proceeding for the purpose of contesting the right
to a patent by a caveat, being interposed against its issuing, was
substantially the same here as in England, (e) From the judg-
(d) Gifford v. Lord Yarborough, 15 Com. Law Rep. 405.—(e) Cunningham v.
Browning, 1 Bland, 299.—(d) 1649, ch. 3; 1793, ch. 82, s. 7; 1802, ch, 45; 1816,
ch. 136.—(e) Cunningham v. Browning, 1 Bland, 299.
COURSEY v. HEMSLEY.—At the Land Office in the State House at the city of
Annapolis, Anno Domini, 1721.
Present the honourable Philemon Lloyd, Esquire, his lordship's deputy secretary
of this province, and sole judge in the determination of all differences and disputes
arising upon land affairs within the said province.
A hearing was then moved for by Mr. James Heath, of counsel for Elizabeth
Coursey of Chester River in Queen Ann's county, and a petition by him produced,
on behalf of her son William Coursey, a minor and legatee of Col. William Coursey,
late of Queen Ann's county aforesaid, Esquire, deceased. Complaining that a cer-
tain Vincent Hemsley of Queen Ann's county, upon the 22d of September, 1720,
had obtained, out of his lordship's Land Office, a special warrant for the resurvey-
ing of two hundred and thirty acres of vacant cultivated land; which said warrant,
as the petitioner afterwards understood, was executed upon the cultivation of a cer-
tain tract of land called Coursey upon Wye, heretofore, that is, upon the 12th of
June, 1695, surveyed for Col. William Coursey, late of Queen Ann's county, de-
ceased; and the said William, in his last will and testament, together with a greater
part of the tract, being nine hundred and twenty acres in all, devised unto William
Coursey, a minor as aforesaid; and that a certificate of the resurvey thereof had
been already returned unto his lordship's Land Office, in order to hare his lordship's
grant thereupon, according to the course of the office. She, therefore, prayed to be
heard by her counsel against the passing of Letters Patent upon the resurvey afore-
said, according to a caveat heretofore by her lodged in the office for that purpose.
But the said Hemsley, by his letters to the above Philemon, alleged an unpre-
paredness to come to a hearing at that time, and prayed a continuance of the cause;
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