of Maryland, to which office he was appointed March 24, 1641. This commission is, so far as known, the only one on record in Maryland which is an appointment to office for life.

Following the precedent set him by his Majesty, Cæcilius Calvert required a yearly rent for all lands granted, which was known as a "quit rent," and constituted a release from the services required under the feudal land tenure. All grants were issued in the name of the Proprietary and were "to be holden of our manor of St. Maries, of Nanticoke, Monacacy," or wherever the land patented happened to be located. These quit rents were payable at "our city of St. Maries at the two most usual feasts of the year, the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Michael the Arch-angel." These were irredeemable and became a great burden to the planters, except in those cases where the grants made in recognition of some service or mark of favor required only a mark of fealty, as "a bushel of Indian corn at Christmas, an Indian arrow, or some other merely formal evidence of loyalty."

In the earliest grants, the annual quit rent was 10 bushels of wheat for every 50 acres. Some grants call for 4 shillings in silver or gold and for a fine upon every alienation of the said land or any part or parcel thereof one whole year's rent. The land was at first given to early settlers to encourage immigration without other cost than their own transportation and the annual quit rent. After 1683 no such inducements were given, the province having by that time made its success and influence sufficiently felt to be sought voluntarily for its natural advantages to all who were looking out for opportunities for advancement. In the early years of the colony

only British and Irish subjects could take up land under the "Condition of Plantation" issued in 1636. In the year 1648, however, new conditions were published and extended the privilege to those of French, Dutch and Italian descent, within the discretion of the Governor. All through the old archives we find acts for the naturalization, or, as it was called in Colonial days, the "denization of foreigners." Not till the year 1683 could persons of all nationalities own lands in Maryland.

That the quit rents, each small in itself, taken together aggregated an immense income, will be seen in the claim filed by Henry Harford, heir of Frederick Calvert, against the English Crown for his lands confiscated during, or rather, at the close of the American Revolution. Harford stated his loss to be about £450,000. The claim was, however, not fully recognized, the English government allowing him only £90,000 or about one-fifth of his demand.

While the ground-rent system had its root in the quit rent of the Lords Baltimore, it differs in going to a private individual instead of the governing head of the Commonwealth. The common tax, which was made a law in the year 1777, gave no relief to the ground-rent system, for, while it overthrew the lords of the soil, refusing to reimburse the last heir of the line in Maryland on the basis that "the people of Maryland should not occupy the degraded condition of tenants to a superior lord, a foreigner and a British subject," it left the ground rent payable to the land holders.

It seems a strange anachronism that in this practical and unpicturesque twentieth century, in the electric glare of which all mediæval pageantry would seem a ludicrous masquerade, that even a vestige of the feudal system could flourish.