REVENUE OFFICERS: PROPRIETARY 85

but one deputy, Robert Clarke; and Clarke, as Surveyor General,
seems to have had none at all. However, the fourth such officer,
Jerome White, from his appointment on September 9, 1661,
chose numerous deputies and shifted to them the actual laying
out of tracts and drawing certificates. ⁴⁰ Within the next decade it
became a rule to appoint one deputy in every county. Each took
all fees and paid in either half the office income or a fixed salary,
as his principal desired. ⁴¹ By an act of June, 1674, all suits for
malfeasance were to lie against the deputy and not against his
superior. Moreover, in or shortly before May, 1683, the examin-
ing and passing certificates of survey, which may earlier have been
done by the Surveyor General, was assigned to an Examiner
General. ⁴²

By this process the Surveyorship had now become an irrespon-
sible sinecure, its functions confined to the appointment and occa-
sional instruction of deputies. Yet it was not until 1725 that a
conference of the two Houses resolved to ask the Governor to
have it abolished. ⁴³ Three years later the Upper House proposed
a similar address, this time to Lord Baltimore himself. ⁴⁴ But,
though useless to the people, these Surveyorships were not without
value to His Lordship, for with one he could help out his Gover-
nor and with the other oblige some favorite.

The fees, paid to the deputy and always in tobacco, were first
established by an act of March, 1638/9, and were raised in the
fee proclamation of August 2, 1642. After November, 1673,
double fees were allowed for resurveys of more than one hundred
acres. ⁴⁵ By the Inspection Law of 1747 surveyors' fees were
reduced one-fifth, but their value in sterling must have remained
about the same.

The two Surveyorships may have had about equal worth until
the 1730's, when there began a great development of what is now

⁴⁰ Cf. Patent Record, first seven libers, passim (Land Office).

⁴¹ For sample commissions to deputies in 1674 and 1685 see Kilty, op. cit., 290,
and Archives, XVII, 390. During the royal period there was also a "King's
Surveyor " in each county, appointed by the Governor, " for Resurveying All Lands
where differences arise at Law about Titles of Land... " (Ibid,, XIX, 70; XXV
21; XXIV, 79).

⁴² Patent Record, liber 21, folio 544 (Land Office).

⁴³ Archives, XXXV, 226, 230; on this occasion the Upper House refused to act.

⁴⁴ Ibid., XXXVI, 165; apparently no such step was taken.

⁴⁵ See the order in Council, Nov. 17, 1673, and the act of June, 1674, chap 4
(Ibid., XV, 2Sl; II 392-94).