14 LAND OFFICE RECORDS

ments of a manor. A manor -was a large grant of land of a thousand
acres or more belonging to one individual who rented or leased out
parcels of it to tenants. There were about 62 such manors granted
to private adventurers in Maryland and about half as many were
erected by the Lord Proprietor himself. ² The manor rents referred
to in this study naturally refer only to the manors owned by the
Proprietor as rents on the others were collected by the individuals
to whom they were granted. The preponderant importance of the
quit rents as a source of revenue is readily apparent when one com-
pares average annual income for the years on record from all four
types of land revenues. Whereas alienation fines yielded from 130
to 200 pounds sterling each year, manor rents about 1, 000 pounds,
purchase or caution money payments between 1500 and 2500 pounds,
quit rents amounted, on an average, to between five to six thousand
pounds. ⁸ Since the quit rents represented the greatest single item
of the Lord Proprietor's income from his colony, it is not surprising
that the levying and collection of them was ever a serious issue both
for the Lord Proprietor and the Marylanders. The former constantly
strove to increase the amount, the latter, to prevent such an increase.
The rent began, in 1633, as twenty pounds of wheat per hundred
acres. In 1642 it was increased to two shillings for every hundred
acres and several years later it was raised to four shillings. ⁴ In 167i
a duty of twelve pence per hogshead on exported tobacco took the
place of normal quit rent (the colony's whole economy at this time
was based on the growing and exporting of tobacco) and from 1717
to 1733 a similar law provided a two shilling per hogshead duty to
cover all quit rent claims. After 1733 until the Revolution quit
rents were again collected normally as before 1671, for the most
part at four shillings per hundred acres. ⁵ Although the total in-
come from manor rents was much less than from freehold rents
because there were so many more of the latter, the rent rate for both
averaged about the same, the one being higher at one time and the
other at another.

² Donnell MacClure Owings, "Private Manors: An Edited List", p. 307,
Maryland Historical Magazine, XXXIII, 4. 1938.

³ Charles A. Barker, The Background of the Revolution in Maryland, New
Haven. 1940, p. 140.

⁴ Gould, p. 33.

⁵ Charles A. Barker, "Property Rights in the Provincial System of Mary-
land, " Journal of Southern History, II, No. 2, pp. 5-6, 10.