A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee | Page 4

land. He brought a number of followers and servants, and, coming over
to Westmoreland County, in the Northern Neck of Virginia, "took up"
extensive tracts of land there, and set about building manor-houses
upon them.
Among these, it is stated, was the original "Stratford" House, afterward
destroyed by fire. It was rebuilt, however, and became the birthplace of
Richard Henry Lee, and afterward of General Robert E. Lee. We shall
speak of it more in detail after finishing, in a few words, our notice of
Richard Lee, its founder, and the founder of the Lee family in Virginia.
He is described as a person of great force of character and many
virtues--as "a man of good stature, comely visage, enterprising genius,
sound head, vigorous spirit, and generous nature." This may be
suspected to partake of the nature of epitaph; but, of his courage and
energy, the proof remains in the action taken by him in connection with
Charles II. Inheriting, it would seem, in full measure, the royalist and
Cavalier sentiments of his family, he united with Sir William Berkeley,
the royal governor, in the irregular proclamation of Charles II. in
Virginia, a year or two before his reinstallment on the English throne.
He had already, it is reported on the authority of well-supported
tradition, made a voyage across the Atlantic to Breda, where Charles II.
was then in exile, and offered to erect his standard in Virginia, and

proclaim him king there. This proposition the young monarch declined,
shrinking, with excellent good sense, from a renewal, under less
favorable circumstances, of the struggle which terminated at Worcester.
Lee was, therefore, compelled to return without having succeeded in
his enterprise; but he had made, it seems, a very strong impression in
favor of Virginia upon the somewhat frivolous young monarch. When
he came to his throne again, Charles II. graciously wore a
coronation-robe of Virginia silk, and Virginia, who had proved so
faithful to him in the hour of his need, was authorized, by royal decree,
to rank thenceforward, in the British empire, with England, Scotland,
and Ireland, and bear upon her shield the motto, "_En dat Virginia
quartam._"
Richard Lee returned, after his unsuccessful mission, to the Northern
Neck, and addressed himself thenceforward to the management of his
private fortunes and the affairs of the colony. He had now become
possessed of very extensive estates between the Potomac and
Rappahannock Rivers and elsewhere. Besides Stratford, he owned
plantations called "Mocke Neck," "Mathotick," "Paper-Maker's Neck,"
"War Captain's Neck," "Bishop's Neck," and "Paradise," with four
thousand acres besides, on the Potomac, lands in Maryland, three
islands in Chesapeake Bay, an interest in several trading-vessels, and
innumerable indented and other servants. He became a member of the
King's Council, and lived in great elegance and comfort. That he was a
man of high character, and of notable piety for an age of free living and
worldly tendencies, his will shows. In that document he bequeaths his
soul "to that good and gracious God that gave it me, and to my blessed
Redeemer, Jesus Christ, assuredly trusting, in and by His meritorious
death and passion, to receive salvation."
The attention of the reader has been particularly called to the character
and career of Richard Lee, not only because he was the founder of the
family in Virginia, but because the traits of the individual reappear very
prominently in the great soldier whose life is the subject of this volume.
The coolness, courage, energy, and aptitude for great affairs, which
marked Richard Lee in the seventeenth century, were unmistakably
present in the character of Robert E. Lee in the nineteenth century.
We shall conclude our notice of the family by calling attention to that
great group of celebrated men who illustrated the name in the days of

the Revolution, and exhibited the family characteristics as clearly.
These were Richard Henry Lee, of Chantilly, the famous orator and
statesman, who moved in the American Congress the Declaration of
Independence; Francis Lightfoot Lee, a scholar of elegant attainments
and high literary accomplishments, who signed, with his more
renowned brother, the Declaration; William Lee, who became Sheriff
of London, and ably seconded the cause of the colonies; and Arthur Lee,
diplomatist and representative of America abroad, where he displayed,
as his diplomatic correspondence indicates, untiring energy and
devotion to the interests of the colonies. The last of these brothers was
Philip Ludwell Lee, whose daughter Matilda married her second cousin,
General Henry Lee. This gentleman, afterward famous as "Light-Horse
Harry" Lee, married a second time, and from this union sprung the
subject of this memoir.

III.
GENERAL "LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" LEE.
This celebrated soldier, who so largely occupied the public eye in the
Revolution, is worthy of notice, both as an eminent member of the Lee
family, and as