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Volume 662, Page 28   View pdf image (33K)
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28 HIS LORDSHIP'S PATRONAGE

a subsequent chapter. It had at first been filled by the Secretary,
but it had been made a separate office in 1641/2 and in 1697 had
been divided between two incumbents, one for each shore. Mean-
while it had become a sinecure with no function but the appoint-
ment and occasional instruction of deputies.

In January, 1716/17, soon after His Lordship's restoration,
Governor John Hart received the Survivorship General of the
Eastern Shore. In June, 1726, Governor Charles Calvert ex-
changed this for the more lucrative Western Surveyorship. Just
at the end of the colonial period, in May, 1774, Governor Eden
gave up the office by appointing to it one Robert Smith of
Annapolis. 41

As Surveyor General the Governor might collect from each
deputy on his shore either a fixed salary or half the incumbent's
fees. In later colonial times this brought him in from £ 120 to
£ 130 a year. 42

The total net value of the chief executive's office, uniting those
of Governor and Chancellor, may have amounted to £ 1800 or
£ 2000 during the royal period. After Baltimore's restoration this
office, now embracing those of Governor, Chancellor, and Sur-
veyor General, may have brought in from £ 2000 to £ 2300. It
was in any case by far the most lucrative place of profit in Mary-
land. But the Governor earned every penny of it. His job was
ticklish and his tenure highly uncertain. Sooner or later, between
trying to please the proprietor and the delegates, he could count
on pleasing neither.

41 Ibid., XXV, 344, 346; Warrants, liber BB, folio 49; Patent Record, liber
El, No. 3, folio 315 (Md. Land Office); Commission Book No. 83, folio 8
(Hall of Records). Hart was appointed Surveyor General for both shores Oct.
11, 1716, and took office Jan. 11, 1716/17. He then relinquished the Western
office to Thomas Bordley, May 20, 1717. Between Calvert's assumption of the
Western Surveyorship and Eden's relinquishment of it, two persons served in this
capacity who were not chief executives. These were Joshua George, from December,
1746, to December, 1748, and George Lee, from November, 1768, till late in 1771.

42 See chapter VIII, note 46.


 

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