§ 60. Lapsed land, is when any one having obtained a patent as before, doth not set or plant thereon within three years, as the condition of the patent requires; but leaves it still all or part uninhabited and uncultivated. In such case it is said to be lapsed, and any man is at liberty to obtain a new patent in his own name of so much as is lapsed, the method of acquiring which patent is thus.
The party must apply himself by petition to the general court, another to the governor, setting forth all the circumstances of the lapse. If this petition be allowed, the court makes an order, to certify the same to the governor, in whose breast it is then to make a new grant thereof to such person if he thinks they deserve it, upon the same condition, of setting or planting within three years, as was in the former patent. Thus land may be lapsed or lost several times, by the negligence of the patentees; who, by such omission, lose not only the land, but all their rights and charges into the bargain.
But if within the three years after the date of the patent, or before any new petition is preferred for it, the patentee shall set or plant the said land, as the law directs; it cannot afterwards be forfeited, but by attainder, or escheat, in which case it returns to his majesty again.
Also when it happens, that the patentee dies within the three years, leaving the heir under age, there is farther time given the heir after he comes of age to set and save such land.
§ 61. When land is suggested to escheat, the governor issues his warrant to the escheator, to make inquest thereof: and when upon such inquest, office is found for the king, it must be recorded in the secretary's office, and there kept nine months, to see if any person will lay claim to it, or can traverse the escheat. If any such appear, upon his petition to the general court he is heard, before any grant can be made. If no person oppose the inquest, the land is given to the man that shews the best equitable right thereto; and if there be none such, it is then granted to any one, that the governor and council shall think fit, the grantee always paying two pounds of tobacco per acre into the treasury of the country, as a fine of composition with his majesty for his escheat: and thereupon a patent issues reciting premises.
CHAPTER XIII.
OF THE LIBERTIES AND NATURALIZATION OF ALIENS IN VIRGINIA.