Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/578

 hundred and fifty acres already held by him under four or five different instruments which he had sued out in the course of many years. A second patent was not infrequently secured in the place of the first, although obtained for the same area of soil, on the ground that the original survey had been inaccurate in the determination of boundaries. A second patent was also acquired quite often to land taken up by the same person but afterwards abandoned, or not seated within the time prescribed by law.

From the date of the first issue of a patent to land in the Colony, certain fees had been allowed to those upon whom rested the duty of drawing up the document. In the beginning, before a legal limit to the size of these fees had been set, they were frequently so excessive as to call forth the remonstrance of the Company; thus in 1622, this body complained that the Secretary was in the habit of demanding twenty pounds of tobacco, or three pounds sterling in money, whenever he delivered the final evidence of title to a private dividend of fifty or an hundred acres, and effective measures were adopted to curtail this unreasonable charge on his part. In 1632, when that corporation had been abolished for a number of years, a fee of thirty pounds of tobacco was allowed for the issue of each patent, in addition to the two pounds which the clerk was authorized to impose for every page of the recorded document. In 1657, the fees for drawing and entering an instrument of this kind amounted to eighty pounds in all, and if a copy of it was afterwards desired, there was a further charge of thirty pounds. As late as