sailors in their turn swore with equal roundness that they had transported themselves at their own expense, and were therefore each entitled to fifty acres in the Colony. There was little likelihood that the common mariner was more scrupulous than his superior in embodying in his oath the statement that he had never received previously a certificate to a head right on the basis of transportation of either himself or his commander. The same custom of selling the certificates secured in this fraudulent manner prevailed among the sailors as among the shipmasters.
There are many indications, however, that the area of soil in the Colony in the possession of seafaring men acquired by patent was very extensive. As early as 1624, there was a grant of two hundred acres at Kecoughtan to William Gainge, a mariner. In 1635, William Barker, also a mariner, obtained a patent to four hundred acres in Charles City County; three years later, Richard Barn-house, who followed the same profession, received by patent two hundred and fifty acres.[1] The author of the New Description of Virginia, writing in 1649, declared that a large proportion of the shipmasters and the principal seamen employed in the transportation of tobacco from the Colony at that time owned plantations there.[2] Powers of attorney are frequently found in the County Court entries of that period still in existence, conferring authority on some one in Virginia to manage or sell estates which had descended to the person giving the power from
- ↑ Va. Land Patents, vol. 1623-1643, pp. 39, 622.
- ↑ The extent of the possessions in land held by shipmasters in Virginia is shown more fully by the County Records than by the Patent Books in the Land Office. Special reference may be made to the Records of York and Lower Norfolk Counties. The instances of sales and purchases by mariners preserved in these records are too numerous to be noted here separately.
