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Volume 662, Page 76   View pdf image (33K)
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76 HIS LORDSHIP'S PATRONAGE

his duty was raised to eighteen pence. In the following year, how-
ever, it was replaced by a two shilling duty as full equivalent for
all quit-rents and alienation fines. This law, called the Equivalent
Act, was suffered to expire at Michaelmas, 1733; and Baltimore
thereafter collected his territorial rents and fines in sterling. 5 The
proprietary's personal income, then, included the following port
duties:

Tonnage. 14d sterling from May, 1661, to the end of colonial times.

Tobacco exported: 12d sterling per hogshead, as a partial equivalent,
from April, 1671, to September, 1716. This was 18d during the last year.

Tobacco exported: 2s sterling per hogshead, as a full equivalent, from
September, 1716, to September 29, 1733, when it expired.

Baltimore's territorial revenue consisted of: (1) caution money
paid by persons taking up vacant or escheated lands, (2) quit-
rents paid by freeholders, (3) alienation fines payable by anyone
selling a freehold, and (4) rent paid by lessors within proprietary
manors and reserves.

His Lordship's sale of land at a fixed " caution " or purchase
price began in the spring of 1683 when the old head-right system
was discontinued. This charge, doubled in 1704, was at first
payable only in tobacco. After 1712 it was accepted in money
at the rate of a penny a pound, and five years later it was set up
in terms of sterling. 6

Quit-rents, established with the first land patents, and aliena-
tion fines, imposed by the Conditions of Plantation of 1658, were
originally payable at St. Mary's in sterling. But under the duty
act of 1671 they might be discharged in tobacco at two pence a
pound, and under the Equivalent Act (1716-33) they were not to
be paid at all. Thereafter, as we have seen, both were again pay-
able in sterling. His Lordship tried to exact alienation fines on
devises in 1736 but had to give it up six years later. 7

Proprietary manors and reserves were leased out in small

8 On circumstances surrounding the expiration of this act, and the delegates'
subsequent efforts to get another such equivalent law, see Mereness op. cit., 79-83
and Gould, op. cit., 38-40, 45-51. '' '

6 See Baltimore's instructions to Agent Charles Carroll, Sept. 12, 1712 quoted
in Kilty, op. cit., 128-33; cf. Mereness, op. cit., 77.

7 Archives, XL, 361; XXVIII, 291. Frederick, the last Baron Baltimore (1751-
71), twice proposed to exact such fines on devises, but he was dissuaded by his
Governor (cf. Horatio Sharpe to Cecilius Calvert, Feb. 10, 1754, and Baltimore's
instructions to Sharpe, Dec, 1760, Ibid., VI, 37; Portfolio No. 3, folder 5, Hall of
Records).


 

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