30 LAND OFFICE RECORDS

Land Office was first organized and the numerous reforms of the
second Lord Baltimore put into effect, separate volumes came to be
devoted to patents, to warrants, and to certificates and assignments.
Things did not immediately proceed quite this definitely for there
was a relapse for a short time, possibly due to the unsettlement
preceding the Revolution of 1688. It is safe to say, however, that
from 1700 on the separation of patents, certificates and warrants
was definite and steadily perfected itself. Actually, instead of two
series there are three, for though patents and certificates are in-
cluded in the same series, each is kept in different volumes.

The Patents series, from 1634 to 1777, contains one hundred and
thirty-three volumes of which some sixty-nine contain patents only,
some thirty-eight contain certificates and assignments only and the
remainder — all belonging to the earliest period — contain land
records of all types. The first four books of the Patents series, as
has already been suggested and as may be noted in the appended list,
contain not only land records of all types but also Court Proceed-
ings, proclamations, Assembly Proceedings and other kinds of busi-
ness of the province. With Liber 4, or AB&H as it is also called, the
entries become confined to land records and from Liber 25 on (or
about the year 1680) patents and certificates begin to be kept
separately.

The Warrants series contains forty-two volumes, the earliest dating
from 1661. Actually the first two volumes of the series contain
land records of all types (they are also both duplicated in the
Patents series)⁴³ and the second two contain primarily the proceed-
ings of the Land Council, so that the Warrants series proper might
be considered to begin with the fifth volume of the series—or around
1680 when warrants first began to be kept separately from other
land records.

As had already been noted, these records were kept in the Secre-
tary's office in the early day of the province. In 1680, with the
establishment of the Land Office and the creation of the office of
Register of the Land Office, the Register became the custodian of
them. During the royal government period the controversy over
the public or private nature of the land records resulted as we
have seen in the patents, warrants and all records relating to title

⁴³ Warrants Liber 1 Is the equivalent of Patents Libers 6 and 7, and War-
rants Liber 2 is a photocopy of a transcript of Patents Liber 0.