GENEALOGY OF THE WASHINGTON FAMILY. 9 seignorial sign of de disappeared from before | This may have attached the Sulgrave Washthe family surname, which also varied from ingtons to the Stuart dynasty, to which they Wessyngton to Wassington, Wasshington, and adhered loyally and generously throughout all finally, to Washington.* A parish in the its vicissitudes. One of the family, Lieutenantcounty of Durham bears the name as last Colonel James Washington, took up arms in written, and in this probably the ancient the cause of king Charles, and lost his life at manor of Wessyngton was situated. There the siege of Pontefract castle. Another of the is another parish of the name in the county of Sulgrave line, Sir Henry Washington, son and Sussex. heir of Sir William, before mentioned, exhibited in the civil wars the old chivalrous spirit of the knights of the palatinate. He served under prince Rupert at the storming of Bristol, in 1643, and when the assailants were beaten off at every point, he broke in with a handful of infantry at a weak part of the wall, The branch of the family to which our Washington immediately belongs sprang from Laurence Washington, Esquire, of Gray's Inn, son of John Washington, of Warton in Lancashire. This Laurence Washington was for some time mayor of Northampton, and on the dissolution of the priories by Henry VIII. he re-made room for the horse to follow, and opened ceived, in 1538, a grant of the manor of Sulgrave, in Northamptonshire, with other lands in the vicinity, all confiscated property formerly belonging to the monastery of St. Andrew's. Sulgrave remained in the family until 1620, and was commonly called "Washington's manor." One of the direct descendants of the grantee of Sulgrave was Sir William Washington, of Packington, in the county of Kent. He married a sister of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the unfortunate favorite of Charles I. a path to victory.* He distinguished himself still more in 1646, when elevated to the command of Worcester, the governor having been captured by the enemy. It was a time of confusion and dismay. The king had fled from Oxford in disguise and gone to the parliamentary camp at Newark. The royal cause was desperate. In this crisis Sir Henry received a letter from Fairfax, who, with his victorious army, was at Haddington, demanding the surrender of Worcester. The following was Colonel Washington's reply: "The de came to be omitted," says an old treatise, "when Englishmen and English manners began to prevail | SIR, upon the recovery of lost credit."―Restitution of decayed intelligence in antiquities. London, 1634. About the time of Henry VI., says another treatise, the de or d' was generally dropped from surnames, when the title of armiger, esquier, amongst the heads of families, and generosus, or gentylman, among younger sons, was subst tuted.-Lower on Surnames, vol. i. The manor of Garsdon in Wiltshire has been mentioned as the homestead of the ancestors of our Washing ton. This is a mistake. It was the residence of Sir Laurence Washington, second son of the above-mentioned grantee of Sulgrave. Elizabeth, granddaughter of this Sir Laurence, married Robert Shirley, Earl Ferrers and Viscount of Tamworth. Washingto. became a baptismal name among the Shirleys-several of the Earls Ferrers have borne it. The writer of these pages visited Sulgrave a few years since. It was in a quiet rural neighborhood, where the farm houses were quaint and antiquated. A part only of the manor house remained, and was inhabited by a farmer. The Washington crest, in colored glass, was to be seen in a window of what was now the buttery. A window on which the whole family arms was emblazoned had been removed to the residence of the actual proprietor of the manor. Another relic of the ancient manor of the Wash intons was a rookery in a venerable grove hard by. The rooks, those stanch adherents to old family abodes, still hovered and cawed about their hereditary nests. In the pavement of the parish church we were shown a stone slab bearing effigies on plates of brass of Laurence Wasshington, gent., and Anne his wife, and their four sons and eleven daughters. The inscription in black letter was dated 1564. It is acknowledged by your books and by report of your own quarter, that the king is in some of your armies. That granted, it may be easy for you to procure his Majesty's commands for the disposal of this garrison. Till then I shall make good the trust reposed in me. As for conditions, if I shall be necessitated I shall make the best I can. The worst I know and fear not; if I had, the profession of a soldier had not been begun, or so long continued by your Excellency's humble servant, HENRY WASHINGTON.† In a few days Colonel Whalley invested the city with five thousand troops. Sir Henry dispatched messenger after messenger in quest of the king to know his pleasure. None of them returned. A female emissary was equally unavailing. Week after week elapsed, until nearly three months had expired. Provisions began to fail. The city was in confusion. The troops grew insubordinate. Yet Sir Henry persisted in the defence. General Fairfax, with * Clarendon, Book vii. + Greene's Antiquities of Worcester, p. 273. 10 GEORGE WASHINGTON'S BIRTH. [1782. 1,500 horse and foot, was daily expected. There | Maryland, against a band of Seneca Indians, was not powder enough for an hour's contest who were ravaging the settlements along the should the city be stormed. Still Sir Henry Potomac. In honor of his public services and "awaited his Majesty's commands." private virtues the parish in which he resided was called after him, and still bears the name of Washington. He lies buried in a vault on Bridges Creek, which, for generations, was the family place of sepulchre. At length news arrived that the king had issued an order for the surrender of all towns, castles, and forts. A printed copy of the order was shown to Sir Henry, and on the faith of that document he capitulated (19th July, 1646) on honorable terms, won by his fortitude and perseverance. Those who believe in hereditary virtues may see foreshadowed in the conduct of this Washington of Worcester, the magnanimous constancy of purpose, the disposition to "hope against hope," which bore our Washington triumphantly through the darkest days of our revolution. We have little note of the Sulgrave branch of the family after the death of Charles I. and the exile of his successor. England, during the protectorate, became an uncomfortable residence to such as had signalized themselves as adherents to the house of Stuart. In 1655, an attempt at a general insurrection drew on them the vengeance of Cromwell. Many of their party who had no share in the conspiracy, yet sought refuge in other lands, where they might live free from molestation. This may have been the case with two brothers, John and Andrew Washington, great-grandsons of the grantee of Sulgrave, and uncles of Sir Henry, the gallant defender of Worcester. John had for some time resided at South Cave, in the East Riding of Yorkshire; but now emigrated with his brother to Virginia; which colony, from its allegiance to the exiled monarch and the Anglican Church had become a favorite resort of the Cavaliers. The brothers arrived in Virginia in 1657, and purchased lands in Westmoreland County, on the northern neck, between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers. John married a Miss Anne Pope of the same county, and took up his residence on Bridges Creek, near where it falls into the Potomac. He became an extensive planter, and, in process of time, a magistrate and member of the House of Burgesses. Having a spark of the old military fire of the family, we find him, as Colonel Washington, leading the Virginia forces, in co-operation with those of The estate continued in the family. Ilis grandson Augustine, the father of our Washington, was born there in 1694. He was twice married; first (April 20th, 1715), to Jane, daughter of Caleb Butler, Esq., of Westmoreland County, by whom he had four children, of whom only two, Lawrence and Augustine, survived the years of childhood; their mother died November 24th, 172, and was buried in the family vault. On the 6th of March, 1730, he married in second nuptials, Mary, the daughter of Colonel Ball, a young and beautiful girl, said to be the belle of the Northern Neck. By her he had four sons, George, Samuel, John Augustine, and Charles; and two daughters, Elizabeth, or Betty, as she was commonly called, and Mildred, who died in infancy. George, the eldest, the subject of this biography, was born on the 22d of February (11th O. S.), 1732, in the homestead on Bridges Creek. This house commanded a view over many miles of the Potomac, and the opposite shore of Maryland. It had probably been purchased with the property, and was one of the primitive farm-houses of Virginia. The roof was steep, and sloped down into low projecting eaves. It had four rooms on the ground floor, and others in the attic, and an immense chimney at each end. Not a vestige of it remains. Two or three decayed fig trees, with shrubs and vines, linger about the place, and here and there a flower grown wild serves "to mark where a garden has been." Such, at least, was the case a few years since; but these may have likewise passed away. A stone* marks the site of the house, and an inscription denotes its being the birthplace of Washington. We have entered with some minuteness into this genealogical detail; tracing the family step by step through the pages of historical documents for upwards of six centuries; and we have been tempted to do so by the Cave Castle, an embattled edifice. It has a noble collec- documentary proofs it gives of the lineal South Cave is near the Humber. "In the vicinity is tion of paintings, including a portrait of General Washington, whose ancestors possessed a portion of the estate."Lewes, Topog. Dict., vol. i., p. 530. * Placed there by George W. P. Custis, Esq. |