The occupation of the Virginia Piedmont received a special impetus from the interest which Governor Spotswood took in the frontier. In 1710 he proposed a plan for intercepting the French in their occupation of the interior, by inducing Virginia settlement to proceed along one side of James River only, until this column of advancing pioneers should strike the attenuated line of French posts in the center. In the same year he sent a body of horsemen to the top of the Blue Ridge, where they could overlook the Valley of Virginia.[90:1] By 1714 he became active as a colonizer himself. Thirty miles above the falls of the Rappahannock, on the Rapidan at Germanna,[90:2] he settled a little village of German redemptioners (who in return for having the passage paid agreed to serve without wages for a term of years), to engage in his iron works, also to act as rangers on the frontier. From here, in 1716, with two companies of rangers and four Indians, Governor Spotswood and a band of Virginia gentlemen made a summer picnic excursion of two weeks across the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah Valley. _Sic juvat transcendere montes_ was the motto of these Knights of the Golden Horse Shoe, as the governor dubbed them. But they were not the "warlike christian men" destined to occupy the frontier. Spotswood's interest in the advance along the Rappahannock, probably accounts for the fact that in 1720 Spotsylvania and Brunswick were organized as frontier counties of Virginia.[91:1] Five hundred dollars were contributed by the colony to the church, and a thousand dollars for arms and ammunition for the settlers in these counties. The fears of the French and Indians beyond the high mountains, were alleged as reasons for this advance. To attract settlers to these new counties, they were (1723) exempt from purchasing the lands under the system of head rights, and from payment of quit-rents for seven years after 1721. The free grants so obtained were not to exceed a thousand acres. This was soon extended to six thousand acres, but with provision requiring the settlement of a certain number of families upon the grant within a certain time. In 1729 Spotswood was ordered by the Council to produce "rights" and pay the quit-rents for the 59,786 acres which he claimed in this county.