(With the Commissioners at the Board of Trade and Plantations in London, on 4 May 1721). They read the report of Mr. West, one of H. M.'s Counsel at Law, upon three named Acts of the Assembly of Virginia, passed in November 1720, and they decided to defer consideration of them to the next meeting. Also, this same day they read a letter from Lord Carteret, Secretary of State, enclosing an Address of the Council and Burgesses of Virginia to His Majesty, on the subject of the three Acts of Assembly passed in Virginia in November 1720, which were then being considered by the Commissioners.
10 May 1721. The Commissioners read two of the three Acts (just mentioned), one of which concerned the establishment of two new counties, Spotsylvania and Brunswick, on the western border. The same day, the Earl of Orkney (Governor of Virginia) attended with Col. Blakiston (Agent for Virginia) and asked that the Commissioners submit their report upon the Address of the Council and Burgesses of Virginia to His Majesty as soon as possible.
16 May 1721. The Commissioners discussed their answer to Lord Carteret relating to the Address (just mentioned) concerning the need for extending their settlements westwards and occupying forts in the passes of the mountains on their western borders. Three days later, the Commissioners approved a draft of a letter to Lord Carteret relating to the need to secure the western frontier of Virginia by an extension of their settlements and by fortification of the mountain passes.
23 May 1721. The Commissioners decided to warn Col. Spotswood that if his Majesty should comply with the wishes expressed in the Address from Virginia concerning the western frontier of Virginia, the Lt. Gov. was to ensure that settlers did not merely leave their existing land to take up new grants in the frontier counties to escape payment of quit rents for several years. He also was not to make grants of "too great a quantity of land to any one person". This same day, Mr. Walpole, Auditor of the Plantations, attended the meeting to protest the proposal that settlers in the two new frontier counties of Virginia should be exempted from payment of Quit Rents for a specified period. He suggested that no such inducements were needed to attract settlers and that the Quit Rent revenue would suffer without compensating advantage.
[The Acts passed by the Virginia Assembly in November of 1720 created two new counties, Spotsylvania and Brunswick. One of the reasons given for the creation of the counties is that they would help protect the western regions from the French. Thus, they played upon the fears of the British concerning the French. So the Acts were designed to suggest they would strengthen the western regions. There was one very unusual feature in the Acts. Land in the new counties was to be free of public levies for ten years. Public levies were not defined but it was hoped that the public levies would be interpreted in England as the purchase price of five shillings per fifty acres, and of the quit rents (the annual "real estate tax"). Spotswood knew that such unusual legislation as this would require approval from England, and, therefore, he did not issue land patents under this legislation, even though applications were made for large quantities of land in the new counties.]
(13 Sep 00)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.