Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/595

 the quit-rents remained unpaid for a period of three years, the proprietary was restored to the possession of the land conveyed under patent.

There was a very notable difference in the means of obtaining a grant in the Northern Neck as compared with the means of obtaining one in other parts of the Colony. The common basis of the patent sued out in the country lying south of the Rappahannock was, as has been seen, the head right. The head right was unknown as a condition of tenure in the Northern Neck. There, a system of purchase was in operation. The scale of prices was five shillings for every hundred acres in a tract under six hundred, and ten shillings for every hundred acres in a tract exceeding that number. This money was required to be paid within six months after the patent had been signed and sealed. It was allowable to present its equivalent in tobacco; in 1690, the rate of valuation was six shillings for every one hundred pounds of that commodity.

It was stated by Howard, in replying to the declaration of the House of Burgesses in opposition to the imposition of a fee for affixing the seal to all public instruments, that to obtain the smallest estate in the Northern Neck, an expenditure of at least twenty shillings was necessary, and in the case of some lands, not less than forty shillings.

One of the most notable consequences of adopting in the Northern Neck the system of granting patents upon payment of a few shillings for each one hundred acres, was the frequent concentration into a single ownership, under the same patent by a single purchase, of enormous tracts of land, situated in that part of Virginia.