documents, including proclamations and commissions as well as patents.[1] This large income was appropriated by the Governor. The new fee raised a great commotion in Virginia, which was not quieted by the assertion of Howard that the authority for its exaction was not his own proclamation but a decree of the Court of Chancery. In 1689, the fee was discontinued on account of the indignant opposition which it excited in the Colony.[2]
It sometimes happened that two certificates had been obtained authorizing the survey of the same land. When patents had been secured on both, it was not uncommon, in order to gain priority, for the more unscrupulous of the grantees to bribe the clerk to put his patent on record before the Governor had signed it, or the seal had been attached to it. The date was omitted, the clerk not being able to anticipate when the deed would be passed upon, and in some cases when the date had been ascertained, he forgot to insert it. In other cases, the patent was not passed upon at all, the patentee taking his title from the imperfect record of his grant.[3] Frequently, documents of this kind which had been signed and sealed, were never entered, owing to the neglect of the clerks who were charged with the performance of this duty; so numerous were these instances, that it was found necessary as early as 1666 to adopt a rule giving these incomplete deeds validity in law.[4] It seems to have been not uncommon for a patentee to transfer his grant before it had been placed on record in the Secretary’s office, the assignment itself being made in the form of an inscription on the back of the instrument, the patent and assignment
