OF COLONIAL MARYLAND 33

consist entirely of leases of lands in Baltimore County and the
third volume contains leases from Anne Arundel, Cecil, Kent, Queen
Anne's, Dorchester, St. Mary's, Charles, Somerset, Worcester, and
Prince George's counties. Entries of leases are alphabetical by
name of lease-holder except in the third volume where this order
is not always maintained. Dates of the leases range from 1707 to
1771, with the majority falling in the forties and fifties.

At one time there were also plats to the Proprietor's manors.
Governor Sharpe in a letter to Lord Baltimore in 1757 speaks of
having "entered in a Book Platts of most of your Ldps Mannours
in the different parts of the Province". ⁵⁰ That book may exist
somewhere among the Calvert family papers. The Land Office has
about a dozen individual manor plats in its custody at the present
time.

RENT ROLLS AND DEBT BOOKS SERIES

The two remaining series of Land Office records, the Rent Rolls
and Debt Books are considerably different from the records of the
Patents and Warrants series. In a sense they are just the Lord
Proprietor's account books and not Land Office records at all. In
fact the dispute over the public or private nature of land records
during the royal period definitely established the rent rolls and
debt books as private records. However, since all land records were
looked upon as more or less private prior to this dispute and the
Land Office considered a private matter by the Proprietor himself,
it is plain that before the royal period rent rolls and debt books
were considered Land Office records. Furthermore, while the Pro-
prietor's personal hold on land affairs was much weakened during
the royal period it was immediately revived when his proprietary
rights were restored in 1715. Forceful efficiency measures on his
part tended to bring land and revenue matters back under the old
single rein, as witness the fact that in 1760 the Proprietor "pro-
posed that part of that Office [the Land Office] shall be a Repository
for all the Farm Contracts from the Rent Roll Keepers... And in
that Office to be Deposited the Leases of all Mannour Lands & of
all other Rights payable to the Ld Proprietor... "⁵¹ Likewise in
1770-1771 we find the question of the private or public nature of

⁵⁰ Arch. Md., VI, 522.
^5l Ibid., IX, 403.