Early in the history of Virginia, the English Crown claimed all of the land which constituted Virginia. This was a personal holding of whomever sat on the throne. Land by itself was not worth much; it took people on the land to pay for it initially and then follow up with a year-by-year fee called the quit rent in colonial Virginia.
When Charles II was pretending to be the King of England in the mid-1600's, he needed help very badly. A few friends provided this, and in gratitude to them he gave them all of the land between the Rappahannock River and the Potomac River. The lands between the rivers were called "Necks" and this one was the most northern one. So it became known as the Northern Neck. Now the Crown no longer owned the land there. It belonged to someone else who eventually, in the Eighteenth Century, was Lord Fairfax.
Outside the Northern Neck, if land had not yet been "claimed", one applied to the Crown for a patent or deed and paid at the rate of one headright or five shillings per fifty acres. The yearly quit rents went to the Crown. The Crown used some of the money it earned in this way to pay the costs of the Virginia government. When you got a patent, you were the first owner after the Crown. You had to make improvements on the land in order to keep it. It was not allowed to stockpile land for later development. It had to be developed now.
In the Northern Neck, one bought land of the proprietor, who for most of the Eighteenth Century was Lord Fairfax. He was the owner of millions of acres. If you bought land from him, he gave you a grant. Then you were the second owner after the Crown, since Fairfax was the first owner after the Crown. The processes of getting patents and grants were slightly different. The money you paid for the land in the Northern Neck went to the proprietor, Lord Fairfax, and into his pocket. He would not honor headrights because he wanted to sell his land. Afterwards, on a yearly basis, you paid a quit rent to Fairfax and this too went into his pocket.
It would have made sense for Fairfax to have sold his land cheaply. The real money was to be earned in the quit rents which went on year after year. I do not know what he charged as a selling price. Of course, he could charge different people different amounts, especially as might reflect the quality of the land. (If anyone knows what Fairfax generally charged for land, both for the initial purchase and for the quit rents, I would like to hear the numbers.)
Whatever you call it, a patent or a grant, it was essentially a deed which some covenants attached to it. The quit rents are to be compared to our property taxes, except that in the Northern Neck they went into the proprietor's pocket.
(30 Apr 03)
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.