The controversy engaged the attention of the British government in a direction favorable to the New Hampshire grantees, the Board of Trade, in a report to his Majesty's Privy Council, proposing measures[51] which, if carried out, would have confirmed the rights of settlers under the grants of New Hampshire. It is worthy of notice that in this report the board spoke with considerable severity of the conduct of the governor of New York in passing patents of confirmation of townships before granted by New Hampshire, and in granting other lands within the district, and in like manner called attention to the exorbitant fees exacted for grants by the governor, secretary, and surveyor of New York, which were more than double those established by an ordinance of 1710. Added to these were unauthorized fees taken by other officers, making "the whole amount of these fees upon a Grant of one thousand acres of Land in many instances not far short of the real value of the Fee Simple." It was in consideration of these emoluments, the board supposed, "that His Majesty's governors of New York have of late years taken upon themselves the most unwarrantable pretenses to elude the restrictions contained in His Majesty's Instructions with regard to the quantity of Land to be granted to any one person," by the insertion in one grant of numbers of fictitious or borrowed names, for the purpose of conveying to one person a grant of from twenty thousand to forty thousand acres. They recommended that his Majesty be advised to give the most positive instructions to the governor of New York that the granting of lands should be attended by no fees to the attorney-general, the receiver-general, or the auditor; and that neither the governor, the secretary, nor the surveyor-general should take any fees but those prescribed by the ordinance of 1710, which were greater than those taken by the same officers for similar service in any other colony.[52] That portion of the report proposing a method of settling the dispute was transmitted by Lord Dartmouth to Governor Tryon, who in a lengthy reply set forth the impossibility of an adjustment upon the plan proposed.