easy to
account for the noble nature of a Randolph, a Lee or a Mason by
nobleness of descent, that careful investigation was considered
unnecessary, and heredity was accepted as a sufficient explanation of
the existence and characteristics of the Virginia aristocracy.

We shall attempt to show that this view is erroneous. Recent
investigation in Virginia history has made it possible to determine
with some degree of accuracy the origin of the aristocracy. Yet the
mixed character of the settlers, and the long period of time over
which immigration to the colony continued make the problem difficult
of accurate solution, and the chances of error innumerable. Out of the
mass of evidence, however, three facts may be established beyond
controversy, that but few men of high social rank in England
established families in Virginia; that the larger part of the
aristocracy of the colony came directly from merchant ancestors; that
the leading planters of the 17th century were mercantile in instinct
and unlike the English aristocrat of the same period.

Much confusion has resulted from the assumption, so common with
Southern writers, that the English Cavaliers were all of distinguished
lineage or of high social rank. The word "Cavalier," as used at the
time of Charles I, denoted not a cast, or a distinct class of people,
but a political party. It is true that the majority of the gentry
supported the king in the civil war, and that the main reliance of
Parliament lay in the small landowners and the merchants, but there
were many men of humble origin that fought with the royalist party and
many aristocrats that joined the party of the people. Amongst the
enemies of the king were the Earls of Bedford, Warwick, Manchester and
Essex, while many leaders of the Roundheads such as Pym, Cromwell and
Hampden were of gentle blood. Thus the fact that a man was Cavalier or
Roundhead proved nothing as to his social rank or his lineage.[1]

No less misleading has been the conception that in Great Britain
there existed during the 17th century distinct orders of society,
similar to those of France or Spain at the same period. Many have
imagined the English nobility a class sharply and definitely separated
from the commonalty, and forming a distinct upper stratum of society.
In point of fact no sharp line of social demarkation can be drawn
between the peerage and the common people. For in England, even in the
days of the Plantagenets, the younger so