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CHAPTER II.
Pages 3-15.
The report of the Committee of Survey, dated 11th May, 1654 (pp. 4, 5, and 6), shows the basis on which Mr. Worsley was then working, and defines the course he had to follow. It provides, in three preliminary recommendations, for ascertaining the lands to be surveyed, and defines in six articles the kind of survey required; by which it is clear that a survey by estates is what the Committee considered necessary, no territorial boundaries being required; and that barren land was not to be surveyed unless lying within profitable land, and then only for the sake of being excluded from it, such land, whether so situate or beyond the mearing of the estate, having to be "cast in." A seventh clause fixes the payment at forty-five shillings per 1000 acres, for all land surveyed according to these instructions. The two remaining clauses (which are incorrectly numbered in the manuscript), defer the survey of Church and Crown lands, and lands not forfeited, as also of lands claimed by English proprietors, or in controversy.
It does not appear that Mr. Worsley was the author of these instructions, or responsible for their imperfections, further than that he may have been an individual (perhaps ex officio) member of the Committee. They appear to have replaced a still more imperfect system on which he had been working, viz., merely measuring the surrounds of whole baronies, for which the payment was by the thousand acres also. Of this earlier work, the Grosse Survey, only a few fragments remain, and they are confined to the terriers or lists of lands, with brief descriptions. The maps, if any were completed, are wholly lost. And even for the imperfection of that work it would be harsh altogether to condemn Mr. Worsley, who was guided by the original ordinance, and probably acted under the orders of persons desirous only of haste, and regardless of the quality of work produced, though so largely interested in it. Such is commonly the case, and it required the commanding mind and determined energy of a man like Petty to frame a better system, and afterwards to carry it out, as will be amply seen by the subsequent narrative of his own proceedings, frequently, however, leading him to regret he had ever embarked in the work at all.
In the report from the Committee of the 24th September, 1654, at pages 8 and 9, we have the Doctor's objections as urged by himself, and his offer to remove them by a more perfect work. The opening paragraph of this offer contains the substance of the whole improvement in a few words. To survey mere barony boundaries, as was first designed in 1653, or estate boundaries only, as subsequently recommended by the committee of May, 1654, was obviously insufficient for the purpose. The barony was too large a space to be subdivided with any accuracy, except by subsequent survey, and the old estate boundaries were not to be adhered to in the ultimate partition, the whole unforfeited land being the space to be subdivided. Dr. Petty's proposition solved the difficulty at once, by the simple means of surveying all known territorial boundaries, all the natural divisions of the country, whether rivers, woods, bogs, or other; in fact, to make a general map of the forfeited lands in the three provinces,
