heir time. But the land has been taken up and
engrossed beforehand, whereby such people are forced to hire and pay
rent for lands or to go to the utmost bounds of the colony for land
exposed to danger....

Randolph then reviewed the steps by which a land patent was obtained and
analyzed the conditions which a person was supposed to fulfill in order
to obtain the land title in fee simple. The first of these was the
requirement for the annual quitrent of one shilling for fifty acres; but
according to Randolph, the colonists "never pay a penny of quit-rent to
the King for it, by which in strictness of law their land is forfeited."
The second requirement was for seating the land within three years to
prevent it from being relinquished as deserted land. The following
description was given of this condition:

By seating land is meant that they build a house upon and keep a
good stock of hogs and cattle, and servants to take care of them and
to improve and plant the land. But instead thereof, they cut down a
few trees and make thereof a hut, covering it with the bark, and
turn two or three hogs into the woods by it. Or else they are to
clear one acre of that land and plant and tend it for one year. But
they fell twenty or thirty trees and put a little Indian corn into
the ground among them as they lie and sometimes make a beginning to
serve it, but take no care of their crop, nor make any further use
of the land.

The third condition pertained to the keeping of "four able men well
armed" on land that was situated on the frontier of the colony. Again
Randolph reported that

... this law is never observed. These grants are procured upon such
easy terms and very often upon false certificates of rights. Many
hold twenty or thirty thousand acres of land apiece, very largely
surveyed, without paying one penny of quit-rent for it. In many
patents there is double the quantity of land expressed in the
patent, whereby some hundred thousand acres of land are taken up but
not planted, which drives away the inhabitants and servants brought
up only to planting to seek their fortunes in Carolina and other
places, which depopulates the country and prevents the making of
many thousand hogsheads of tobacco, to the great diminution of the
revenue.

Three proposals were submitted to the Board of Trade by Randolph to
correct the evils of the land