Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/544

 merchants for sale, they were compelled to pay, in addition to the actual expenses of transportation, the profit which the traders demanded for their trouble in obtaining the servants in England.

From the very inauguration of the system of head rights, it was abused and evaded by every contrivance which ingenuity could suggest. In many cases, several patents were obtained by the same person on the strength of the number of times he had paid the charges of his own passage across the ocean. Thus in the year 1637, a tract of seven hundred acres was granted to John Chew, one hundred acres of which was allowed him for his own transportation in 1622 and 1623. In a patent of one thousand acres acquired by Theodorick Bland and his brother near the close of the century, they were entered for two head rights respectively on their individual account, although they had for many years been prominent citizens of Virginia. There is a record of a grant, in 1651, in which the patentee was permitted to receive eight head rights for this number of voyages across the sea backwards and forwards. This was in contempt of the spirit although in conformity with the letter of the law. No lapse of time, as observed in the case of John Chew, to which reference has been made, served to make invalid a claim based upon the transportation of one&#8217;s self. The widower could secure patents on head rights acquired by his marriage to several wives in succession, provided that he could truthfully swear that he had brought them into the Colony, or that they had come at