these estates, or, if they wished to
keep within the limits of the law, they built but slight shanties, so
small and ill constructed that no human being could inhabit them. On
one grant of 27,017 acres the house cost less than ten shillings. In
another case a sheriff found in one county 30,000 acres upon which
there was nothing which could be distrained for quit rents. At times
false names were made use of in securing patents in order to avoid the
restrictions of the law.[100]

Amid these acts of deception and fraud one deed is conspicuous. Col.
Philip Ludwell had brought into the colony forty immigrants and
according to a law which had been in force ever since the days of the
London Company, this entitled him to a grant of two thousand acres of
land. After securing the patent, he changed the record with his own
hand by adding one cipher each to the forty and the two thousand,
making them four hundred and twenty thousand respectively. In this way
he obtained ten times as much land as he was entitled to and despite
the fact that the fraud was notorious at the time, so great was his
influence that the matter was ignored and his rights were not
disputed.[101]

Alexander Spotswood was guilty of a theft even greater than that of
Ludwell. In 1722, just before retiring from the governorship, he made
out a patent for 40,000 acres in Spotsylvania County to Messrs. Jones,
Clayton and Hickman. As soon as he quitted the executive office these
men conveyed the land to him, receiving possibly some small reward for
their trouble. In a similar way he obtained possession of another
tract of 20,000 acres. Governor Drysdale exposed the matter before the
Board of Trade and Plantations, but Spotswood's influence at court was
great enough to protect him from punishment.[102]

The commonness of fraud of this kind among the Virginia planters of
the earlier period does not necessarily stamp them as being
conspicuously dishonest. They were subjected to great and unusual
temptations. Their vast power and their immunity from punishment, made
it easy for them to enrich themselves at the public expense, while
their sense of honor, deprived of the support of expediency, was not
great enough to restrain them. The very men that were the boldest in
stealing public land or in avoiding the tax collector might have
recoiled from an act of private dishonesty or injustice. However, it
would be absurd in the face of the facts here brought forth, to claim