The wealthy planters consistently avoided the payment of taxes. Their enormous power in the colonial government made this an easy matter, for the collectors and sheriffs in the various counties found it convenient not to question their statements of the extent of their property, while none would dare to prosecute them even when glaring cases of fraud came to light. Estates of fifty or sixty thousand acres often yielded less in quit rents than plantations of one-third their size.[98] Sometimes the planters refused to pay taxes at all on their land and no penalty was inflicted on them. Chilton declared that the Virginians would be forced to resign their patents to huge tracts of country if the government should demand the arrears of quit rents.[99] Even greater frauds were perpetrated by prominent men in securing patents for land. The law required that the public territory should be patented only in small parcels, that a house should be built upon each grant, and that a part should be put under cultivation. All these provisions were continually neglected. It was no uncommon thing for councillors to obtain patents for twenty or thirty thousand acres, and sometimes they owned as much as sixty thousand acres. They neglected frequently to erect houses on these estates, or, if they wished to keep within the limits of the law, they built but slight shanties, so small and ill constructed that no human being could inhabit them. On one grant of 27,017 acres the house cost less than ten shillings. In another case a sheriff found in one county 30,000 acres upon which there was nothing which could be distrained for quit rents. At times false names were made use of in securing patents in order to avoid the restrictions of the law.[100] Amid these acts of deception and fraud one deed is conspicuous. Col. Philip Ludwell had brought into the colony forty immigrants and according to a law which had been in force ever since the days of the London Company, this entitled him to a grant of two thousand acres of land. After securing the patent, he changed the record with his own hand by adding one cipher each to the forty and the two thousand, making them four hundred and twenty thousand respectively. In this way he obtained ten times as much land as he was entitled to and despite the fact that the fraud was notorious at the time, so great was his influence that the matter was ignored and his rights were not disputed.[101]