Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/580

 with sufficient care to produce an insignificant crop. In the greatest number of cases, however, the new plantations were promptly seated in accordance with the spirit as well as with the letter of the law, because the owners were anxious to establish homes at once, and convert the soil to the uses which would promote the welfare of themselves and the community. It was where the land was taken up under the influence of speculative motives, or merely as a pasture for cattle, that the conditions as to seating it were carried into effect, if carried into effect at all, in a perfunctory manner. Very properly the operation of this condition was suspended whenever special reasons existed to justify it. Thus if the patentee had been driven from his property by an incursion of Indian marauders, and it was unsafe to return until a great length of time had passed, the regular limit of three years for the performance of the rule as to seating was extended to seven, and if the possession of the hostile intruders was prolonged for seven years or more, the period in which the provisions of the regulation were to be carried out was still further extended. The penalty that the lands should be forfeited unless seated in the prescribed time was not always enforced, but instances of a strict regard for the law in this particular were most common in the early history of the Colony, when custom had not confirmed the spirit of laxity which was springing up in all matters relating to the appropriation of the soil. A persistent effort was made to escape the regulation as to