1. After the outbreak of war the property rights of British citizens were indeed cloudy until Jefferson introduced a resolution “concerning Money Due British Subjects” and the legislature passed a bill he drafted “concerning escheats and forfeitures from British subjects” (Boyd, Papers of Jefferson description begins Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (18 vols. to date; Princeton, N. J., 1950——). description ends , II, 168–72; Hening, Statutes description begins William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619 (13 vols.; Richmond and Philadelphia, 1819–23). description ends , IX, 377–80; X, 66–71). The several laws provided for state-appointed custodians of sequestered British property, with all profits paid into the state treasury along with “all unpaid rents due to British subjects” (Harrell, Loyalism in Virginia, pp. 85–86). The escheat measure called for the legal confiscation of British property and its sale by a county escheator. The law provided that “the former owner might claim the money paid to the commonwealth for the estate,” and from 1779 onward large sales were made of personal property, lands, and slaves condemned by courts of inquest (ibid., pp. 89, 95–98). As Harrell points out, a bill calling for suspension of these acts failed to pass the House of Delegates shortly after Cornwallis’s defeat. Instead, an act passed late in 1781 diverted all receipts from sequestered estates to a sinking fund for military certificates, and at the May 1784 session a resolution passed which might have then led to a suspension of the “farther operation” of the escheat laws, but time ran out and nothing was done.

The matter was revived on 1 Dec. when the previous resolutions and other documents on escheats were brought before the Committee of the Whole. A drafting committee was appointed with JM as a member. This group produced the bill which was introduced on 3 Dec. and passed on 22 Dec. JM carried it to the Senate, but that body balked at approving the House version. Conferences were required before a revised bill was finally accepted by the House on 30 Dec. (JHDV description begins Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia; Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Williamsburg. Beginning in 1780, the portion after the semicolon reads, Begun and Held in the Town of Richmond. In the County of Henrico. The journal for each session has its own title page and is individually paginated. The edition used is the one in which the journals for 1777–1786 are brought together in two volumes, with each journal published in Richmond in either 1827 or 1828 and often called the “Thomas W. White reprint.” description ends , Oct. 1784, pp. 52, 79, 85, 92, 93, 95). The main part of the final version is in Ms (Vi), and the act is printed in Hening, Statutes description begins William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619 (13 vols.; Richmond and Philadelphia, 1819–23). description ends , XI, 446.