show signs of fraud in the presentation of headrights.
Occasionally more land was granted than the claimant was entitled to on
the basis of the headrights he presented. But the headright system, even
imperfectly administered, remained during the Parliamentary period as
one of the elements of restraint on the unbounded desires of the
planters. Land acquisition was thus tied in a fixed ratio to population
increase. There was, as a result, some assurance that land acquired
would be populated and farmed. It was not until late in the seventeenth
century that anyone could buy land for money alone, a practice which
enabled some individuals in the eighteenth century to obtain holdings
exceeding 100,000 acres. In the middle of the seventeenth century 10,000
acres was a practical "top" limit.

At the beginning of the Commonwealth period in Virginia a number of new
counties were set up. The Assembly of April 1652 listed two new ones:
Gloucester, north of the York, and Lancaster, north of the Rappahannock.
The Assembly of November 1652 listed Surry, south of the James, for the
first time. Settlers had moved into these areas earlier when they were
parts of other counties, and in two cases the county organization may
have been set up prior to April 1652. The Assembly of July 1653, in
addition to authorizing exploration and settlement on the Roanoke and
Chowan rivers in present-day North Carolina, and exploration into the
Appalachian Mountains, ordered that a county to be called Westmoreland
should be set up west of Northumberland County on the Potomac, with
boundaries from Machodoc River to the falls of the Potomac above the
town of the Anacostan Indians. It was thus intended not only to include
in the new county all the lands of the Doeg Indians, but also those of
the Anacostans. The Assembly of November 1654 authorized the
establishment of New Kent County along both sides of the upper York
River and far up the Pamunkey and Mattaponi rivers.

The Assembly of November 1654 also authorized the three new northern
counties of Lancaster, Northumberland, and Westmoreland to march against
the Rappahannock Indians to punish various "injuries and insolencies
offered" by them. One hundred men were to be raised in Lancaster, forty
in Northumberland, and thirty in Westmoreland. The commissioners of
these counties were authorized to raise the troops, and one of their
number was appointed commander-in-chief of the expedition. He was to
march to