OF COLONIAL MARYLAND 21

study. Further, colonial Land Office records discussed here refer
only to those in the present custody of the Land Office. ²²

Colonial Land Office records are made up of five different series,
according to their present arrangement in the Land Office—Patents,
Warrants, Proprietary Leases, Rent Rolls and Debt Books. The
first two series, the Patents and Warrants, contain not only patents
and warrants but also certificates, caveats, proofs of rights, assign-
ments, proclamations of Lord Baltimore, conditions of plantation
and all manner of records pertaining to granting of land. These two
series actually represent the main body of Land Office records. This
is evident from the fact that the various lists of land records made
and reported at different times during the colonial period consist
of the books of these two series with the Provincial Court land
records sometimes included. ²³ The reason, of coarse, that the two
series, the Rent Rolls and Debt Books, do not have the stature of
the Patents and Warrants series is that they were kept as private
account books for collecting rent and do not have anything to do
with granting or transferring title of land. Proprietary leases fall
somewhere between the first group and the second in significance as.
land records. They record title of a secondary, temporary sort.

THE CHARTER AND CONDITIONS OF PLANTATION

To begin at the very beginning it is necessary to mention the
antecedent of all Maryland land records, the charter granting
Maryland to Lord Baltimore. The charter granting the territory
comprising Maryland had originally been drawn up by George Lord
Baltimore, but he dying before the patent was completed, the grant
was made on June 20, 1632 to his son Cecilius. By the terms of the
charter the territory was to be held in free and common socage from.
the king of England with a nominal annual rent of two Indian
arrows and one-fifth of all gold and silver found. It was made both

²² Although these records in the present Land Office constitute a complete,,
definitive body of colonial Land Office records, scattered additional
records are to be found at the Maryland Hall of Records, the Maryland
Historical Society, in the Johns Hopkins University Papers and in county
records. These consist entirely of papers and records of the more private
or secondary sort, pertaining to the proprietor's revenue such as dupli-
cates of debt books and rent rolls, lists of manor rents, accounts, aliena-
tion lists, etc:

²³ cf. Arch. Md., XX, 192-200; Provincial Court Land Records, Liber H. D.,
pp. 118-124.