Volume 2, Chapter 15, The Virginia Land System
The southern colonies generally had a much less eventful history in the first half of
the 18th century than their more northerly sisters. These colonies expanded, but retained
roughly the same social and political structure. A large plantation economy, growing mainly
of Money, tobacco, and staffed with forced labor, with negro slaves increasing more and
more in relation to indentured servants.
The head-right system of land grants, among other political institutions, had subsidized
the importation of indentured servants, and the availability of forced labor in turn permitted
Large Plantations, otherwise uneconomic, to develop and prosper.
In each colony the Anglican Church was established, but not very popularly, and religious liberty
was permitted to all Protestants.
An appointed royal or proprietary governor with his allied council presided over the
colony and was confronted with an elected assembly, which, though elected reasonably
democratically, generally represented the planter oligarchy. Slaves and servants, of
course, could never vote. The assembly jealously guarded its power over appropriation in tax
bills and would not relinquish it to the executive. Maryland and Virginia were particularly stable
in this period, especially the former colony. Virginia received a deep imprint from the
and the Lengthy Administration of Governor Alexander Spotswood, 1710-22 A thoroughgoing reactionary, Spotswood was, in the words of Herbert Osgood, a high tory and defender of the prerogative in matters of church and state, and an aggressive imperialist in his relations with the Indians, the French and the neighboring colonies. He was a close friend of the influential British
William Blathwaite. Spotswood was always ready to arm and fight against the Indians or the French, and he urged English seizure of the Great Lakes and Trans-Allegheny region.
In contrast to the northern colonies, a permanent fund for governor's salaries existed in both Maryland and Virginia, and this weakened the extent of assembly control over the governor.
Governor. But the assembly could still threaten to cut off other appropriations for the executive
branch, and this proved an effective weapon. During Queen Anne's War, the assembly balked
at Spotswood's demand for military appropriations against a rumored, but never materialized,
attack by the French. Four years later, it again balked at appropriations to fight Indians
in South Carolina. Governor Spotswood arrived in Virginia with instructions to reform the
land system. The original fairly viable head-right policy of granting 50 acres to each settler
had been prevented through granting free settlers an additional 50 acres for each indentured
servant. To this were added the purchases of head-rights, Virginia having decided in
1702 to allow unlimited purchases of head rights at the price of five shillings for 50 acres.
Fraudulent surveys and grants also helped result in a policy of large land grants to speculators
instead of to settlers. Spotswood at first tried to reform the system of land monopoly.
The legal requirement that land be cleared and planted before grant of title
had been construed so loosely that a land speculator could appropriate 10,000 acres
by clearing just one acre and building a tiny hut upon the acre of land.
Spotswood managed to drive through a stricter land law in 1710 and 1713, providing also
for forfeiture for non-payment of quit rent.
Spotswood was interested not only in genuine reform, but also in enforcement of the perennially
contentious quit-rent burden.
The council, however, was largely composed of great landlords.
They bitterly resisted the new laws, and as judges of the general court, declared the
forfeiture applicable only to future rather than past land grants, and even this restricted
provision was not enforced by Virginia officials.
Alexander Spotswood finally decided that it would be more profitable to join the grantees
than to try to defeat them.
Spotswood not only had his own land laws weakened in 1720, he also inaugurated an era of large
land grants on easy terms, especially in the tempting areas of unsettled Piedmont land
West of the Virginia Fall Line. Spotswood himself was not slow to take advantage of
his own change of heart, especially when he heard of his pending removal. And by the end
of his term, he had managed to grant himself over 85,000 acres in Spotsylvania County.
As an extra bonus, Spotswood granted himself a special quit-rent exemption for a seven-year
Period. He also took care to be granted land containing iron mines, the first iron produced
in Virginia. He even imported a settlement of Germans to found Germana and to work the
mines, but the subsidized venture turned out to be a failure. The first imported Germans
were Swiss, who soon moved to new land of their own, at which point Spotts Wood made
made certain to import palatine Germans to be indentured servants who could not leave
their work so readily.
The policy of land engrossment was continued and expanded by Spotswood's successors, among
whom was William Gooch, who governed Virginia from 1726 to 1749.
In 1730, Gooch made the lot of the land monopolist still easier by deferring quid rents, and
and permitting the settlement of one family for every thousand acres.
These terms were specified in a grant of 30,000 acres to John Van Meter.
Between 1730 and 1736, just six years, eight grants were made by the Virginia government
totaling 500,000 acres of unsettled land.
The largest grant was 130,000 acres to William Beverly. Some of these grants passed through
the Piedmont and into the Shenandoah Valley. These grants began in 1728 with gifts of 26,000
acres to Larkin Chu and his associates. The van Meters soon received 40,000 acres. The
The actual settlers, however, were not necessarily worse off in securing this land here than
elsewhere.
In no colony was a libertarian homestead principle in full operation.
And many settlers found it cheaper to purchase small farms from these speculators than to
battle for patents from the Virginia bureaucracy or to buy land in Pennsylvania.
In the March westward, Virginia came into conflict with competing land monopolists,
the owners of the huge Northern Neck.
Lord Culpepper had been proprietor of Northern Neck as well as co-proprietor of Virginia
itself in the late 17th century, but when he sold back his proprietary right in Virginia
to the Crown in 1684, he could not negotiate a sale for Northern Neck, for which he then
The Northern Neck Grant had passed by inheritance into the hands of Lord Fairfax. Fairfax, by loose construction of the Charter, contended that Northern Neck should extend to all the land between the headwaters of the Potomac and Rappahannock, including Rapidan Rivers.
Finally, in 1745, the case was decided in favor of Lord Fairfax over the protest of
the Governor and the House of Burgesses.
By this appalling decision, Lord Fairfax was granted the ownership of the enormous total
of six million acres of northern Virginia, including a large piece of the Shenandoah
Valley.
The decision awarded to Fairfax, the present Virginia counties of Culpeper, Folkere, Rappahannock, Madison, Prince William, Stafford, Fairfax, Loudon, Arlington, Warren, Page, Shenandoah, Clark, Frederick, King George, Westmoreland, Richmond, Northumberland, and Lancaster.
and the West Virginia counties of Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, Hampshire, and Hardy.
In the meanwhile, leading tidewater planters had for decades received land grants from Virginia in this expanding region.
Particularly active was William Beverly, nephew of William Byrd II, and the Beverly family had secured over 60,000 acres
and, in fact, a large part of Augusta County. In contrast, Robert King Carter, an agent of Lord Fairfax and senior member of the Council, had acquired an enormous amount of land under Fairfax's overlordship for himself, his relatives and friends.
When Fairfax's claim was upheld, he validated all Virginia grants in his region, with himself,
of course, as the overlord, receiving quit rents.
The quit rents, however, were poorly enforced, Fairfax having come up against the almost
universal colonial resistance to paying this feudal levy.
Being poorly enforced, the Fairfax proprietary did not arouse the resentment that might have
have been expected.