Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/579

 1688, the fee for recording a patent continued to be thirty pounds of tobacco, although in that interval this commodity had gone through great fluctuations in value.

When, in 1692, Governor Andros made an investigation of the methods prevailing in the office of the Secretary, he found many glaring indications of carelessness and indolence. Many patents were lying in confusion in the corners of the office, where they were exposed to the depredations of insects. Andros proceeded at once to introduce a radical change in this state of neglect and disorder; he caused the torn and scattered records to be copied into new books, and made every provision against their destruction by fire, but, as it turned out, in vain, for in 1698 the office was burned down. Collecting the records that had survived the flames, he directed that they should be rearranged and again copied.

When a patent to land had been secured by the different steps in the procedure described, there were two important conditions to be observed before the title was perfected, and a failure to carry out these conditions worked a legal forfeiture. The first, to use the technical term in vogue, was to &#8220;seat&#8221; the new plantations. A very broad interpretation of what constituted a seating in the eyes of the law prevailed in the Colony. All requirements in this respect were thought to have been performed if the patentee had erected a small cabin of the meanest pretensions on the land, had suffered a small stock of cattle to range for twelve months in its woods, and had put down an acre in tobacco or corn, whether subsequently allowed to choke with weeds or only tended