OF COLONIAL MARYLAND 31

being adjudged public and hence left in the custody of the Royal
Secretary rather than with the Proprietor's Agent. At the end of
the royal period the Register again resumed custody and kept it
throughout the remainder of the colonial period.

The records of these two important series have on the whole been
preserved remarkably well. On not a few occasions, from the seven-
teenth century on, there was agitation and subsequent legislative
action in tive interests of their preservation. With the lists of land
records as they exist today I have included a list of the land records
as they existed in 1680 (a list identical, except for later additions,
to another list compiled in 1694). ⁴⁴ Only four of the thirty books
of the 1680 list are missing today and one of them, Liber D, is not a
land record but a book of instructions pertaining to land matters
and another, Liber RM, is a land record of a restricted type. It
deals with lands in what is now Delaware, and may possibly be in
existence in that state. The other two missing volumes are Liber
I&K "Buries 2 Bookes of Rights from 1649 to 1657", and Liber P
"Booke of Rights & Warrants 1660" which appears to be missing
already on the 1694 list. ⁴⁵

PROPRIETARY LEASES

The Proprietary Leases series consists of just three volumes. All
the leases, as the title implies, are leases between the Lord Pro-
prietor (represented by his agent) and individuals who rented lands
on his manors or reserves. It appears that though some leases were
recorded in county land records, as a whole they were not recorded
regularly in a separate volume series the way patents and other
instruments were. Instead they were made out in duplicate and
the lessee and the agent each received a copy. The agent was to keep
these, but apparently he lacked a methodical system in so doing.
In 1757 Governor Sharpe complains to the proprietor of "the Neglect
of those who have heretofore had the Care & Management of these
Lands None of whom have recorded or kept Copies of the Leases
that they granted, & as many Tenants have lost their leases & know
not how their Lands are situated or bounded. "⁴⁶ Later the same
year he writes in another letter to Lord Baltimore: "... The Steward

⁴⁴ cf. p. 77.

⁴⁵ Arch. Md., XX, 192-200.

⁴⁶ Ibid., VI, 322-523.