as any law with so impracticable an object in view could have been. No influence was omitted that was likely to impress the minds of persons who were in a position to build in the towns projected. The offer of a lot for a small amount of tobacco and the exemption within the boundaries of each town of the person and property of its citizens from the process of law for the recovery of debts which had been contracted previously elsewhere, were in themselves inducements of the highest importance. The law of 1680 was not open to the objection which could be very justly urged against the statute of 1671, for it did not seek to establish one port on each of the four large rivers of the Colony; on the contrary, a port of entry was appointed for each county on a site admitted to be the most convenient for a majority of its inhabitants.
In accord with the provisions of the Act of Cohabitation, steps were taken by the authorities of all the counties to lay off sites for towns at the different places designated by law. Records of this fact have come down to us in a few instances only. In the levy entered in court in Lancaster in January, 1683, five hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco were allowed George Heale for defining the boundaries of the proposed port of entry at Corotoman.[1] In 1681, Robert Beverley and Abraham Weeks were appointed to serve as trustees of the town to be built in Middlesex.[2] The feoffees empowered to act in Norfolk County were William Robinson and Antony Lawson, and among the first purchasers of lots were such prominent citizens as Peter Smith, Richard Whitby, Henry Spratt, and William Porteus.[3] The feoffees who conveyed
