fty acres, the fee rent of
one shilling.

_In witness whereof_ I have to these presents sett my hand and
the great seale of the colony, given at James Citty the six and
twentieth day of January one thousand six hundred twenty one [o.s.]
and in the yeares of the raigne, of our Soveraigne Lord, James by
the Grace of God King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland,
Defender of the faith &c., Vizt: of England, France and Ireland the
nineteenth and of Scotland the five and fiftieth, and in the
fifteenth yeare of this plantacon.

Claiborne supervised most of the surveys included on the list of patents
that was drawn up by Governor Wyatt in 1625. Out of 184 patents that
were issued to individual planters, over seventy-five per cent included
only 200 acres or less with the most frequent grant being the 100-acre
grant to the "ancient planter." For the remaining individual grants,
approximately one-sixth were between 201 and 600 acres; four were
between 601 and 1,000 acres; and four exceeded 1,000 acres.

In an analysis of the status of the Virginia population with regard to
landholding at the time of the dissolution of the company in 1624,
Professor Manning C. Voorhis concluded that only about one-seventh of
the 1,240 population obtained land from the company. This would leave
the remainder of the settlers as indentured servants or tenant farmers
who worked out their maintenance or transportation either for the
company or for private individuals who financed their trip to America.
The tenant farmers constituted the larger group. In the chapter that
follows, some attention will be given to the status of these immigrants
and the extent to which they were able to become independent landowners
in the colony.

CHAPTER THREE

Virginia as a Royal Colony

The Nature and Size of Land Grants

A variety of reasons led the King to dissolve the London Company and to
assume royal control over the first experiment in colonization under an
incorporated company. Failure of the colony to thrive economically, the
poor financial condition of the company, political differences between
Sir Edwin Sandys and the King, internal dissensions between the Sandys
faction and the Smith-Warwick group, the extremely high death rate in
the colony, and the impact of the Indian massacre of 1622--all
contributed in varying degrees of importance to the dissolution. The
company rejected efforts of the crown to su