beside Jamestown was adopted in 1623, when the Assembly provided for the erection of courts in Charles City and Elizabeth City.[1] In what year it was required to enter a deed of record in the counties, it is now difficult to say, but it was probably contemporaneous with the creation of the County Courts. In the earliest of the county records, copies of conveyances are to be discovered.
It became a settled principle in later times, that no estate was to pass unless the deed had been acknowledged before the Governor and Council, or the justices of the county in which the land to be conveyed was situated.[2] One of the principal objects had in view in the adoption of this regulation was to protect the interests of creditors from the operation of a secret transfer of title. It was provided that the deed should be entered before the end of six weeks following its delivery, and it remained without validity for four months after it had been properly acknowledged.[3]
- ↑ Lawes and Orders, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. III, No. 9; McDonald Papers, vol. I, p. 96, Va. State Library. The first reference made to the existence of monthly courts will be found in the “Briefe Declaration of the Plantation of Virginia during the first Twelve Years,” British State Papers, Colonial, vol. III, No. 21, I. It is as follows: “Monethly Courtes were held in every precinct to doe justice in redressing of all small and petty matters, others of more consequence beinge referred to the Govr. Counsell and Generall Assemblie.” This was in 1619. Colonial Records of Virginia, State Senate Doct., Extra, 1874, p. 81. See also Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 571.
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, p. 512.
- ↑ Persons who are interested in the system of land tenure of New England as well as of Virginia in the colonial age, will find one of the most important land laws of New England discussed with clearness and learning in a paper by Prof. Charles M. Andrews of Bryn Mawr College, Pa., entitled the “Connecticut Intestacy Law,” which appeared in the Yale Review, November, 1894. This paper has been reprinted in pamphlet form.
