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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Letter from William Tryon to William Petty, Marquis of Lansdowne
Tryon, William, 1729-1788
July 18, 1767
Volume 07, Pages 513-514

[From Tryon's Letter Book.]
Letter from Governor Tryon to Earl Shelburne.


No 11.


Brunswick 18th July 1767.

The copy of the Receiver Generals letter which I have the honor to transmit to your Lordship represents the present method observed in imposing and collecting his Majesty's quit rents in this province. This department stands in need of some further assistance, and other regulations before the receipt of quit rents can bear any proportion to the great number of patents that have been granted. Mr Rutherford estimates the arrears of quit rents due to the crown at seven thousand pounds proclamation money, but as this is merely conjecture, it is possible the arrears may be four times as much. When I am better informed of what improvements may be made in levying this material branch of the crown revenue, I will submit them to his Majesty's judgment. In the mean time should his Majesty think proper to purchase Lord Granville's district, it would more than treble the value of the quit rents, and it is an object so extremely coveted, to a man, by the inhabitants settled there that I believe it might be productive of any law, his Majesty would propose for the better and more easy collecting his quit rents. The inhabitants in his Lordship's district dread the opening of his land office (tho' they want extremely the land) from the many impositions and abuses they have suffered by former agents, and from the many disturbances and law suits that have arose from the irregularity in the office, when it has been open. If it could be purchased for sixty thousand pounds sterling, it would be cheap, it is

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certainly the most rising innterest on the continent of America, tho' not in competition as to territory with Mr Pen's. His Lordships district contains nearly one degree of latitude, and better than five degrees of longitude, from Currituck Inlet to where the commissioners have just settled the western boundary, and contains a vast majority of white inhabitants settled in this province, as may be seen by the list of taxables for 1765. There is thirteen intire counties in his Lordships district, the two westermost of which counties, contain a tract of land more than ten times the contents of Rhode Island colony, Orange county being nearly sixty miles square, and Rowan county sixty miles wide, and about one hundred and fifty from east to west, running to the blue ridge of mountains,

I am, my Lord &c.

P. S. Duplicates of the patents that have been granted, I am told have been from time to time sent home to the late Earl Granville, and the counterparts are lodged in the hands of Mr Munford one of the Treasurers of this province