o insignificance with the
passing of the Stuart dynasty. Not the least sufferer was the rector of
Purleigh, for the Puritan Parliament ejected him from his living, on the
charge "that he was a common frequenter of ale-houses, not only himself
sitting dayly tippling there ... but hath oft been drunk,"--a charge
indignantly denied by the royalists, who asserted that he was a "worthy
Pious man, ... always ... a very Modest, Sober Person;" and this latter
claim is supported by the fact that though the Puritans sequestered the
rich living, they made no objection to his serving as rector at Brixted
Parva, where the living was "such a Poor and Miserable one that it was
always with difficulty that any one was persuaded to accept of it."

Poverty resulting, John, the eldest son of this rector, early took to the
sea, and in 1656 assisted "as second man in Sayleing ye Vessel to
Virginia." Here he settled, took up land, presently became a county
officer, a burgess, and a colonel of militia. In this latter function he
commanded the Virginia troops during the Indian war of 1675, and when his
great-grandson, George, on his first arrival on the frontier, was called
by the Indians "Conotocarius," or "devourer of villages," the formidable
but inappropriate title for the newly-fledged officer is supposed to have
been due to the reputation that John Washington had won for his name among
the Indians eighty years before.

[Illustration: TABLET TO LAURENCE WASHINGTON AND HIS FAMILY IN SULGRAVE
CHURCH]

Both John's son, Lawrence, and Lawrence's son, Augustine, describe
themselves in their wills as "gentlemen," and both intermarried with the
"gentry families" of Virginia. Augustine was educated at Appleby School,
in England, like his grandfather followed the sea for a time, was
interested in iron mines, and in other ways proved himself far more than
the average Virginia planter of his day. He was twice married,--which
marriages, with unconscious humor, he describes in his will as "several
Ventures,"--had ten children, and died in 1743, when George, his fifth
child and the first by his second "Venture," was a boy of eleven. The
father thus took little part in the life of the lad, and almost the only
mention of him by his son still extant is the one recorded in Washington's
round school-boy hand in the family Bible, to the effect that "Augustine
Washington and Mary Ball was Married the Sixth of March 17-30/31.
Augustine Washington Departed this