mported and located the grant in the area
selected by the claimant as long as the land had not already been
patented and had not been barred for white settlement in order to
maintain peace with the Indians. Upon completion of the survey and of
marking the boundaries, a copy of the record along with the headright
certificate was presented to the secretary's office where a patent was
prepared and a notation made of those imported. The final step was the
signing of the patent by the Governor in the presence of, and with the
approval of, the Council.

One deviation from the spirit of the law of the headright involved
claims based upon the person being imported into the colony more than
once. For example, John Chew in 1637 received 700 acres, using his own
transportation in 1622 and 1623 as the basis for the claim to 100 acres
in the grant. Carrying this practice to a greater extreme, Sarah Law
received a grant for 300 acres of land based upon the fact that she had
imported John Good, probably a sailor, six times.

On a larger scale, ship masters submitted lists for headright claims
which in actuality contained the roster of both the sailors of the ship
and the passengers. In neither case should the right have been
acknowledged, for the sailors were under agreement to continue service
at sea and the passengers had paid their own transportation to the
colony. But the lax administration of the system usually permitted
approval of such applications, and the ship master therefore found
himself with headright certificates which he could sell to others for
whatever price he could wangle. This practice was sometimes repeated by
the same unscrupulous ship master who was aided in the irregular
procedure by the failure of the clerks of the secretary's office to make
careful checks of lists submitted, and also by the fact that he could
present his lists to a different county court when importing the same
sailors for the third or fourth time.

Like the ship master, the sailor engaged in falsifying the record by
swearing that he had imported himself and sometimes others at his own
expense. Patents were obtained on the basis of the headright. Philip A.
Bruce concluded that the land obtained in Virginia by mariners was "very
extensive." To substantiate this general statement, he referred to
powers of attorney found in the county court records, authorizing an
agent in Virginia to handle the estates of the mariner. In the records
of Rappa