=Feudal Elements in the Colonies—­Quit Rents, Manors, and Plantations.=—­At the other end of the scale were the feudal elements of land tenure found in the proprietary colonies, in the seaboard regions of the South, and to some extent in New York.  The proprietor was in fact a powerful feudal lord, owning land granted to him by royal charter.  He could retain any part of it for his personal use or dispose of it all in large or small lots.  While he generally kept for himself an estate of baronial proportions, it was impossible for him to manage directly any 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 L9000 (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 L19,000 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 extending to capital punishment.

The manors of New York or Maryland were, however, of slight consequence as compared with the vast plantations of the Southern seaboard—­huge estates, far wider in expanse than many a European barony and tilled by slaves more servile than any feudal tenants.  It must not be forgotten that this system of land tenure became the dominant feature of a large section and gave a decided bent to the economic and political life of America.