in the instructions to Howard.[1] It does not appear that the General Assembly passed a law at any time in pursuance of these instructions. The author of Leah and Rachel about the middle of the century declared that the report that fifty acres were allotted to each servant when he became free was a delusion.[2] There must have been strong ground for opposition on the part of the landowners to the establishment of such a regulation. If it had been customary to make such a grant, the large body of persons who, when their terms expired, entered into indentures again, or hired themselves out at stated wages, would have been drawn away at once to their own estates, and the ability of the planters who had been their masters to secure laborers in place of them would have been diminished to a serious extent.[3]
- ↑ Instructions to Culpeper, 1679; Howard, 1685, McDonald Papers, vol. V, p. 518, vol. VI, p. 259, Va. State Library. See also Colonial Entry Book, No. 106, pp. 339, 340; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1681-1682, p. 151, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Leah and Rachel, p. 11, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III. This statement is confirmed by an order of the General Court, Jan. 13, 1626, Robinson Transcripts, p. 61.
- ↑ Beverley, who wrote at a time when the right of appropriating land had been very much enlarged, states that “each servant had a right to take up fifty acres where he can find any unpatented.” There is preserved in the Records of York County, an indenture between an English carpenter and a Virginian planter, in which the allotment of fifty acres is referred to as “according to the custom of the country.” Records of York County, vol. 1638-1648, p. 367, Va. State Library. This indenture was drawn up in England in 1647, and probably by one who was really ignorant of the customs prevailing in the Colony. The desire of the Virginian planter, who was a party to it, to secure the carpenter, may have been so great that he was willing, when the mechanic’s term came to an end, to grant him fifty acres whether it could be legally claimed or not. There is no concurrence of evidence that at this time the allotment of fifty acres to a servant on the expiration of his term was an established regulation. If he obtained thus area it was probably by a perversion of the head right.
