Mother Earth: Land Grants in Virginia, 1607-1699

by Walter Stitt Robinson

These weaknesses and abuses of the Virginia land system underwent a detailed analysis near the end of the seventeenth century by the newly created agency—the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations which was commonly known as the Board of Trade. During the first year of its organization in 1696 the Board received a report from Edward Randolph, sent from England to be surveyor-general of customs in America. Randolph pondered the question as to why the colony of Virginia was not more densely populated with all of the migration that had occurred. He attributed little importance to the imputation of "the unhealthiness of the place" and to the assertion that tobacco sales yielded little return in England after all fees were paid. In an incisive statement he concluded that

... the chief and only reason is that the inhabitants have been and still are discouraged and hindered from planting tobacco in that colony; and servants are not so willing to go there as formerly because the members of Council and others who make an interest in the government have from time to time procured grants of very large tracts of land, so that for many years there has been no waste land to be taken up by those who bring with them servants, or by servants who have served their time. But the land has been taken up and engrossed beforehand, whereby such people are forced to hire and pay rent for lands or to go to the utmost bounds of the colony for land exposed to danger....

Randolph then reviewed the steps by which a land patent was obtained and analyzed the conditions which a person was supposed to fulfill in order to obtain the land title in fee simple. The first of these was the requirement for the annual quitrent of one shilling for fifty acres; but according to Randolph, the colonists "never pay a penny of quit-rent to the King for it, by which in strictness of law their land is forfeited." The second requirement was for seating the land within three years to prevent it from being relinquished as deserted land. The following description was given of this condition:

By seating land is meant that they build a house upon and keep a good stock of hogs and cattle, and servants to take care of them and to improve and plant the land. But instead thereof, they cut down a few trees and make thereof a hut, covering it with the bark, and turn two or three hogs into the woods by it. Or else they are to clear one acre of that land and plant and tend it for one year. But they fell twenty or thirty trees and put a little Indian corn into the ground among them as they lie and sometimes make a beginning to serve it, but take no care of their crop, nor make any further use of the land.

The third condition pertained to the keeping of "four able men well armed" on land that was situated on the frontier of the colony. Again Randolph reported that

... this law is never observed. These grants are procured upon such easy terms and very often upon false certificates of rights. Many hold twenty or thirty thousand acres of land apiece, very largely surveyed, without paying one penny of quit-rent for it. In many patents there is double the quantity of land expressed in the patent, whereby some hundred thousand acres of land are taken up but not planted, which drives away the inhabitants and servants brought up only to planting to seek their fortunes in Carolina and other places, which depopulates the country and prevents the making of many thousand hogsheads of tobacco, to the great diminution of the revenue.

Three proposals were submitted to the Board of Trade by Randolph to correct the evils of the land system: first, order a survey in every Virginia county of the lands in question; second, demand full payment of all quitrents in arrears and use legal compulsion to collect them; and third, limit grants to 500 acres for one man and have them issued on "more certain terms." Such requirements would produce threefold advantages to the crown and the colony. They would either bring in additional revenue by collection of the quitrent; or if payment were not made, approximately 100,000 acres of land would revert to the King and could be granted to new settlers. Limitation of grants to 500 acres would increase the number of planters, make settlements more compact, and produce more tobacco. And finally, both trade and the customs collection on tobacco would be enhanced.

Before concluding his report, Randolph acknowledged both the awareness of the problem and the efforts of correction initiated by Francis Nicholson while Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia from 1690 to 1692. Nicholson was

... very sensible of the damage and injustice done to the crown by their using and conniving at such unwarrantable practices in granting away the King's lands, and was resolved to reform them by suing some of the claimers for arrears of quit-rents; but finding that the Council and many of the Burgesses, among others, were concerned, and being uncertain of his continuing in the government, he ordered to begin with Laurence Smyth, who was seised of many thousand acres of land in different counties, and for one particular tract of land was indebted £80 for arrears of quit-rents, which sum after the cause was ripe for judgment, was compounded for less than one half.

Before the year was out, the Board of Trade sought more information on this problem and directed a series of searching questions in October, 1696, to Randolph who had then returned to England. Both the questions and the answers are recorded in the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1696-1697 (pages 172, 188-89). Out of the ten questions asked, the following seem most significant in revealing Randolph's evaluation of the Virginia land system.