[1] WILLIAM WALLER HENING, _The Statutes at Large Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia_ (New York, 1823), vol. 2, pp. 172-176.
[3] William Fitzhugh was founder of the renowned Virginia family that bear his name. As chief justice of the Stafford County court, burgess, merchant, and wealthy planter, he epitomized the landed aristocrat in 17th-century Virginia. See "Letters of William Fitzhugh," _Virginia Magazine of History & Biography_ (Richmond, 1894), vol. 1, p. 17 (hereinafter designated _VHM_), and _William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World_ (1676-1701), edit. Richard Beale Davis (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, for the Virginia Historical Society, 1963).
[5] ROBERT BEVERLEY, _The History and Present State of Virginia_, edit. Louis B. Wright (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1947), p. 88; PHILIP ALEXANDER BRUCE, _Economic History of Virginia_, 2nd ed. (New York: P. Smith, 1935), vol. 2, pp. 553-554.
[6] _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia_ (hereinafter designated _JHB_) 1659/60-1693, edit. H. R. McIlwaine (Richmond, Virginia: Virginia State Library, 1914), pp. 303, 305, 308, 315.
[7] "Letters of William Fitzhugh," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1895), vol. 2, pp. 374-375.
[8] _JHB 1659/60-1693_, op. cit. (footnote 6), p. 351.
[9] HENING, op. cit. (footnote 1), vol. 3, pp. 53-69.
The difficulties confronting the central and local governing bodies in putting the Acts into effect are illustrated by the attempts to establish a port town for Stafford County. Under the act of 1680 a town was to be built at "Peace Point," where the Catholic refugee Giles Brent had settled nearly forty years before, but there is no evidence that even so much as a survey was made there. The 1691 Act for Ports located the town at Potomac Neck, where Accokeek Creek and Potomac Creek converge on the Potomac River. Situated about three miles below the previously designated site, it was again on Brent property, lying within a tract leased for life to Captain Malachi Peale, former high sheriff of Stafford. On October 9, 1691, the Stafford Court "ordered that Mr. William Buckner deputy Surveyor of this County shall on Thursday next ... repair to the Malachy Peale neck being the place allotted by act of assembly for this Town and Port of this County and shall then and there Survey and Lay Out the said Towne or Port ... to the Interest that all the gentlemen of and all other of the Inhabitants may take up such Lot and Lots as be and they desire...." On the same day John Withers and Matthew Thompson, both justices of the peace, were appointed "Feoffees in Trust." Young Giles Brent, "son and heir of Giles Brent Gent. late of this county dec^{ ed}" and not yet 21, selected Francis Hammersley as his guardian.