To return, however, to Richard Lee.  He had already visited Virginia in some official capacity under the royal governor, Sir William Berkeley, and had been so much pleased with the soil and climate of the country, that he, as we have said, emigrated finally, and cast his lot in the new 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,