32 LAND OFFICE RECORDS

or Agent should I think keep a Book by way of Record for every
mannour wherein all Leases for or Agreements concerning Parcells
of such Mannour should be duly entered & also a proper and par-
ticular Description of every Tract or parcell that should be leased
or Tenanted.., "⁴⁷ In his 1761 instructions for setting up the
Board of Revenue, Lord Baltimore specifically provided for proper
custody of his leases:

After the said Office shall be fitted up, you are to lodge
therein all Counterparts of Leases (which have been granted
for any Lands of mine) that are now in your Possession, and as
often as our Lieutenant Governor, and you, shall for the future
grant any Leases for my Manor or Reserved Lands, you shall
Lodge the Counterparts thereof in the said Office, placing and
titling them in such Methodical manner as that Recourse may
easily be had thereto on all Occasions. ⁴⁸

The apparent neglect in keeping the proprietary leases was doubt-
less partly due to the fact that in the early days there were not
many leases held because there was so much freehold land available.
Further, during the royal period the manors seem to have been
much neglected and the whole system of proprietary leasing allowed
to go to pieces. Under the circumstances it is not difficult to under-
stand that orderly preservation of the leases did not prevail. After
the royal period, the Proprietor's interest in the manors revived,
there was a considerable increase in the number of tenants and
more efficient methods of supervising the manors were adopted.
In fact manor rents were at their peak and showed promise of
further increase at the time when Lord Baltimore decided to sell
all his manors in 1764. By far the great majority of leases in this
series are dated after 1730.

Although, as we have seen, Governor Sharpe in 1756 was advo-
cating recording of the leases, his plan was apparently never carried
out by the proprietary government. The three volumes of leases
as we have them were not compiled till almost a century later, when
George G. Brewer, Register of the Land Office from 1827 to 1851,
seems to have arranged and recorded them. ⁴⁹ The first two volumes

⁴⁷ Ibid., IX. 62.

⁴⁸ Ibid., XXXH, 391.

⁴⁹ In Proprietary Leases, Liber B. pp. 595 and 601 certain footnotes or
notations concerning endorsements on leases are to be found. They are
signed "Geo. G. Brewer Reg. Land Office" and there is no doubt, from
the handwriting and arrangement on the page, that they were written
at the time the leases were copied.