AGRICULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES. 455 



Commissioners of Foreign Affairs ; viz. : " What number of Eng- 

 lish, Scotch, and Irish have for these seven years last past come 

 yearly to plant and inhabit with your government ; and also/ 

 what blacks or slaves have been brought in within the same ? " 

 " Yearly there comes in of servants about fifteen hundred ; most 

 are English, few Scotch, and fewer Irish, and not above two or 

 three ships of negroes in seven years ! " He says nothing of 

 the free immigrants, though included in the interrogatory, and 

 their number was doubtless too inconsiderable for notice. 



The feudal system was transplanted to Virginia, and the royal 

 grants of land gave the proprietors baronial power. One of 

 these grants, or "patents," as they were called, gave the paten- 

 tee the right " to divide the said tract or territory of land into 

 counties, hundreds, parishes, tithings, townships, hamlets, and 

 boroughs ; and to erect and build cities, towns, parish churches, 

 colleges, chapels, free schools, almshouses, and houses of correc- 

 tion, and to endow the same at their free will and pleasure, and 

 .did appoint them full and perpetual patrons of all such churches 

 so to be built and endowed ; with power also to divide any part 

 or parcel of said tract or territory, or portion of land, into manors, 

 and to call the same after their own or any of their names, or by 

 other name or names whatsoever ; and within the same to hold 

 a court in the nature of a court baron, and to hold pleas of all 

 actions, trespasses, covenants, accounts, contracts, detinues, 

 debts, and demands whatsoever, when the debt or thing de- 

 manded exceed not the value of forty shillings, sterling money 

 of England ; and to receive and take all amercements, fruits, 

 commodities, advantages, perquisites, and emoluments whatso- 

 ever, to such respective court barons belonging or in any wise 

 appertaining ; and further, to tyold within the same manors a 

 court leet and view of frank pledge of all the tenants, residents, 

 and inhabitants of the hundred within such respective manors," 

 etc., etc. 



The Maryland and Virginia estates were large, extending far 

 back in the country, from their fronts on the Chesapeake Bay or 

 its tributaries, near which the buildings were located. Tide- 

 water was at every cavalier planter's door, and ships from Eng- 

 land brought him his annual supplies of merchandise in exchange 

 for his crop of tobacco, while smaller crafts came with the prod- 



