CONDITIONS OF SETTLEMENT. 19

of ten years after the date of the grants. A reservation of such parts of each lot as might afterwards he found necessary for fortifications or public purposes, and of a hundred acres f0 ‘ a church and glebe, and of fifty acres for a schoolmaster, was made, five hundred feet from high- water mark being reserved for the purpose of a free fishery. Deposits of gold, silver, and coal were reserved for the Crown. It i'as stipulated that the grantee of each town- ship should settle the same within ten years from the date of the grant, in the proportion of one person for every two hundred acres; that such settlers should be European foreign protestants, or such persons as had resided in British North America for two years previous to the date of the grant; and, finally, that if one-third of the land was not so settled within four years from the date of the grant, the whole should be forfeited. Thus the whole island was, in 1767, disposed of in one day, with the exception of lot sixty-six, reserved for the King, and lots forty and fifty- nine,——\vhich had been promised to Messrs. Spence, B‘Iuir, and Catheart, and Messrs. Mill, Cathcart, and Higgens, by the government, in 1764, in consideration of their having established fisheries, and made improvements on the islandf—aiid three small reservations, intended for three county towns. A mandamus addressed to the Governor of Nova Seotia, the island being new annexed to that. province, ,was handed to each of the proprietors, instructing the governor to issue the respective grants, on the conditions specified. In the following year, 1768, a large majority

of the proprietors presented a petition to the Ixi' g, praying that the island should be erected into a separate government ;

that the qiiitrents which would become payable, according

*Sce manuscript. minute of meeting 01‘ Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, dated eighth July, 1767.