Land Grants in The Swan River Colony - Other Land Grants

Other Land Grants

Although the land grants to settlers were conditional on their meeting improvement conditions, many unconditional grants were also made. A number of important officials and capitalists were granted large areas of land as reward for service; James Stirling, Charles Fremantle and Thomas Peel were all recipients of such grants. In addition, military personnel were permitted to claim land in lieu of pay, and these grants did not have conditions attached. Much of the land obtained in this way was not developed, being instead held for speculative reasons. The large amounts of good land tied up in this way was often blamed later for the slow progress of the colony.