These weaknesses and abuses of the Virginia land system underwent a detailed analysis near the end of the seventeenth century by the newly created agency--the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations which was commonly known as the Board of Trade. During the first year of its organization in 1696 the Board received a report from Edward Randolph, sent from England to be surveyor-general of customs in America. Randolph pondered the question as to why the colony of Virginia was not more densely populated with all of the migration that had occurred. He attributed little importance to the imputation of "the unhealthiness of the place" and to the assertion that tobacco sales yielded little return in England after all fees were paid. In an incisive statement he concluded that ... the chief and only reason is that the inhabitants have been and still are discouraged and hindered from planting tobacco in that colony; and servants are not so willing to go there as formerly because the members of Council and others who make an interest in the government have from time to time procured grants of very large tracts of land, so that for many years there has been no waste land to be taken up by those who bring with them servants, or by servants who have served their time. But the land has been taken up and engrossed beforehand, whereby such people are forced to hire and pay rent for lands or to go to the utmost bounds of the colony for land exposed to danger.... Randolph then reviewed the steps by which a land patent was obtained and analyzed the conditions which a person was supposed to fulfill in order to obtain the land title in fee simple. The first of these was the requirement for the annual quitrent of one shilling for fifty acres; but according to Randolph, the colonists "never pay a penny of quit-rent to the King for it, by which in strictness of law their land is forfeited." The second requirement was for seating the land within three years to prevent it from being relinquished as deserted land. The following description was given of this condition: By seating land is meant that they build a house upon and keep a good stock of hogs and cattle, and servants to take care of them and to improve and plant the land. But instead thereof, they cut down a few trees and make thereof a hut, covering it with the bark, and turn two or three hogs into the woods by it. Or else they are to clear one acre of that land and plant and tend it for one year. But they fell twenty or thirty trees and put a little Indian corn into the ground among them as they lie and sometimes make a beginning to serve it, but take no care of their crop, nor make any further use of the land. The third condition pertained to the keeping of "four able men well armed" on land that was situated on the frontier of the colony. Again Randolph reported that