considerable part of the land in his dominion. Consequently he either
sold it in parcels for lump sums or granted it to individuals on
condition that they make to him an annual payment in money, known as
"quit rent." In Maryland, the proprietor sometimes collected as high as
£9000 (equal to about $500,000 to-day) in a single year from this
source. In Pennsylvania, the quit rents brought a handsome annual
tribute into the exchequer of the Penn family. In the royal provinces,
the king of England claimed all revenues collected in this form from the
land, a sum amounting to £19,000 at the time of the Revolution. The quit
rent,--"really a feudal payment from freeholders,"--was thus a material
source of income for the crown as well as for the proprietors. Wherever
it was laid, however, it proved to be a burden, a source of constant
irritation; and it became a formidable item in the long list of
grievances which led to the American Revolution.

Something still more like the feudal system of the Old World appeared in
the numerous manors or the huge landed estates granted by the crown, the
companies, or the proprietors. In the colony of Maryland alone there
were sixty manors of three thousand acres each, owned by wealthy men and
tilled by tenants holding small plots under certain restrictions of
tenure. In New York also there were many manors of wide extent, most of
which originated in the days of the Dutch West India Company, when
extensive concessions were made to patroons to induce them to bring over
settlers. The Van Rensselaer, the Van Cortlandt, and the Livingston
manors were so large and populous that each was entitled to send a
representative to the provincial legislature. The tenants on the New
York manors were in somewhat the same position as serfs on old European
estates. They were bound to pay the owner a rent in money and kind; they
ground their grain at his mill; and they were subject to his judicial
power because he held court and meted out justice, in some instances