Sulgrave Manor

312.195 A7

THE SULGRAVE INSTITUTION

THE ANCESTRY OF

GEORGE WASHINGTON First President of the United States of America (1)

Fu':* -LAWRENCE WASHINGTON, -AIMEE £res First grantee of Sugrate Manor. £ died 1584. died 1563." *

(1)

1)

Eliza's Liair-ROBERT washingtoN-ass''Fishes *::: *.

ofSulgrave, died 1610.

MARGARET BUTLER =LAWRENCE WASHINGTON, of Sulgrave and Brington, ied 1616.

AMPHILLIS RHOADES-REV LAWRENCE WASHINGTON of Brington, Rector of Purleigh, died 1653.

JOHN WASHINGTON IA'c.

The Emigrant settled in #.

Westmoreland Co., Virginia 1657, died 1677

Čo. Virginia

MILDRED WARNER-LAWRENCE WASHINGTON, of Gloucester Co.. of Virginia, born 1661. irginia

died 1607. (a) #; AUGUSTINE WASHINGTON, 7"'': of Lancaster Co., (1)

JANE

of Westmore

£" £"

/

-

-

- - -

of virginia, born Bridge's Creek, 1694; died 1743.

Virginia, *'''.i.

G President GEORGE WASHINGTON. BORN 1732: DIED 1799.

"#:”

THE WASHINGTON COAT OF ARMS,—ORIGIN OF THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,—THE ARMS OF THE PRIOR OF THE MONASTERY OF ST. ANDREW, AND THE ROYAL TUDOR ARMS ARE GRAVEN ON THE ENTRANCE PORCH OF SULGRAVE MANOR

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE ENGLAND'S GIFT TO THEWORLD Ay ETHEL ARMES AUTHOR OF

THE SULGRAVE INSTITUTION 233 BROADWAY. NEW YORK , U. S.A.

TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I. Madam's Close Page $ PART II. An Ancient English Village Page 1 3 PART III. Present Day Glimpses Page 2 1 PART IV. The Sulgrave Institution Page 27 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 7 The shadowy green of Madam's Close.

10 The restored living hall of the Washingtons showing the rich oak screen.

1 1 The ''Great Chamber' ' where Lawrence Washington, grandfather of John The Emigrant, was born.

1 3 The original open fireplace of the sixteenth century with Elizabethan firebacks.

1 4 Where Robin Goodfellow tiptoes in.

1 6 Where once upon a time the monks of the old priory told their beads.

1 7 The original oak timbers covered for many past gen erations with thick plaster are now exposed.

It) The fallen sun dial is lifted and the lost garden blooms again.

21 The Manor House has revived its ancient grace and noble appearance.

24 Armorial glasses in the mullioned windows carry the quartered bearings of the Washington family.

27 In early Spring the ancient Manor House has a very bloom upon it and looms blue and ghost-like thru a mist of apple blossoms.

29 Ancient oak door with hand-made lock and key.

This book is issued under the auspices of THE WOMEN'S COMMITTEE THE SULGRAVE INSTITUTION Copyright, 1912, by ETHEL ARMES ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING TRANSLATIONS INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

*7

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE i Madam's Close jULGRAVE MANOR, the home of George Washington's ancestors in Northamptonshire, England, has been given to the peoples of the United States and the British Com monwealth by a group of English people.

Like Washington's own home in Virginia, Mount Vernon, it is now a shrine of public pilgrimage.

Like Mount Vernon it is in a quiet and pleasant country place, shadowed by friendly old trees and sur rounded by flowing green fields and pastures. Its dedication as a House of Peace and its formal opening to the public took place June 21 , 19n .

As an example of the early sixteenth century English manor house, comparatively small, severely plain, yet exquisite in line and proportion, the Washington Manor House is rare today even in England where an cient homes are everyday matters. There is grace and beauty in the interior of the house as well, in the mullioned windows, the Jacobean stairs, the paneled rooms, doors and cupboards and in the pattern of the inner garden court where in the time of Bluff King Hal, the Wash ington children played. .5

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE Until today this has all been buried treasure so far as the world's view has gone. But now the manor house is being restored and furnished, the fallen sundial lifted, and the lost garden made to bloom again.

Oberon, Titania and little Robin Goodfellow may even come tiptoeing back into the shadowy green of Madam's Close where long ago Lady Washington "took the air." For it was in the reign of the wood fairies and the household elves throughout the villagery of England that the ancestors of George Washington dwelt in Sulgrave.

On the site of the Manor House there was once an ancient priory, built in Norman times. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII in 1539, this came into the possession of Lawrence Washington, twice Mayor of Northampton. In the triangular spaces to the left and right of the entrance porch which he fashioned, he placed two stone shields bearing the Washington coat of arms. This coat of arms is held by some historians to be the origin of the stars and stripes of the flag of the United States.

The village of Sulgrave at whose eastern end the Manor House is located is so small it is not even on the average map of England. It is a once-upon-a-time kind of place and really belongs in a poem or fairy story more than on a map.

There are just two streets, winding and winding all around the town.

One is named Big Street and the other, Little Street. The one store is also the Post-office. There is an old-time tavern, "The Star," a black smith shop, the Parish church of St. James and a few groups of quaint old-time cottages. Red Riding Hood might have lived in any one of these little houses and her grandmother's cottage with its latch on the outside of the door might be just around the bend of the road under the great oaks darkening Castle Hill .

All of the cottages are built of gray and red stone and have steep roofs and very, very high chimneys. Some have steep stone shingle roofs like that of the Washington Manor House, but most of them have thatched roofs. They look as if they were all in one family-—were children and grandchildren of the Manor House—they are so much alike.

Almost all of them have little kitchen gardens with fruit trees, grape vines, shrubs, creepers and old-fashioned flow ers everywhere-— the kind of flowers which Shakespeare loved so much: "There's rosemary, that's for remem brance . . . and there ispansies, that's for thoughts . . . there's fennel for you, and columbines; there's rue for you; and here's some for me; we may call it herb grace o' Sun days. . . . There's a daisy ... I would I could give you some violets. ..."

THE SHADOWY GREEN OF MADAM S CLOSE Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, Shakespeare's birthplace, is only a few miles across country from Sulgrave. Indeed Shakespeare might have poached quite as readily on the Washington Manor House grounds as he did on the estate of Sir Thomas Lucy. Perhaps he did, but no one found it out—and he never told—so nobody knows.

At least he found out all the secrets of that Sulgrave country even though no record or tradition may connect him with it—so he must have poached! How else:—"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.

There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight, And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. .

Local legend connects Queen Elizabeth with the place. When she was Princess Elizabeth and just -six years old Lawrence Washington bought Sulgrave Manor. The rich Mayor of Northampton was quite a person 7

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE age in Northants. The little princess, shadowed much, with a tutor here, a tutor there, moved her domicile more or less. At any rate the old tradition goes that she was a guest of the Washington children in Sulgrave Manor and that once, during a game of hide and seek she hid in the attic cupboard. And the dark, richly paneled old cabinet, at the head of the stairs leading to the attic, is still pointed out to visitors as "Queen Elizabeth's Cupboard." Another tradition relates that it was in Sulgrave Manor that Elizabeth took refuge on one occasion from the persecution of her sister, Queen Mary.

There are said to be about five hundred people now living in Sulgrave, but you certainly would not think there were that many. Most of the young people have gone. There are only the old folks left and a few—very few children. All who were there put on the dress of Queen Elizabeth's day at the recent dedication ceremonies and danced old English folk dances in the old-time garden called Madam's Close.

Although the ancient hamlet seems so remote, it is the very radiating point, so far as America's interest lies, of the bright historic life of the English Midlands. Not only was Shakespeare a near neighbor. The ancestors of Benjamin Franklin dwelt for centuries in Ecton, a village about twenty miles from Sulgrave. William Penn, John Harvard, Oliver Cromwell and John Milton, all lived within a few miles of Washington's Manor. Four American presidents trace their ancestry to this locality.

Another neighboring village, Flore, was the home of the forbears of President John Adams and of President John Quincy Adams. It is probable that the ancestors of Warren G. Harding, twenty-ninth presi dent of the United States, also came from this part of Northants.

It is more than likely—and how pleasant to fancy it true!—that Wash ington, Adams, Hardings and Franklins, and perhaps many another ancestral group of present day American families—all met together in the revels of Kenilworth in 1575. For the festivities in that stately seat of the Earl of Leicester, so near to Sulgrave Manor, in honor of Queen Elizabeth's visit drew the people of all that Midland country.

Certain of his critics and commentary writers conjecture that little William Shakespeare, then eleven years old, was also taken by his father to see the splendors there and that the pageant described in such fine detail by Sir Walter Scott in Kenilworth, proved fountain source to the poet boy for many a play thereafter. How Sir Walter takes us there in spirit and in fact !

"For such and so great was the throng which flocked in all directions towards Kenilworth, to see the entry of Elizabeth into that splendid mansion of her prime favorite, that the principal roads were actually blocked up and interrupted.

"The Queen's purveyors had been abroad, sweeping the farms and villages of those articles usually exacted during a royal progress, and for which the owners were afterwards to obtain a tardy payment from the Board of Green Cloth. The Earl of Leicester's household officers had been scouring the country for the same purpose; and many of his friends and allies, both near and remote, took this opportunity of ingratiating themselves by sending large quantities of provision and delicacies of all 8

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE ,J = kinds, with game in huge numbers, and whole tuns of the best liquors, foreign and domestic. Thus the highroads were filled with droves of bullocks, sheep, calves and hogs, choked with loaded wains, whose axle-trees cracked under their burdens of wine-casks and hogsheads of ale, and huge hampers of grocery goods, and slaughtered game, and salted provisions, and sacks of flour. Perpetual stoppages took place as these wains became entangled; and their rude drivers, swearing and brawling till their wild passions were fully raised, began to debate precedence with their wagonwhips and quarter-staves which occasional riots were usually quieted by a purveyor , deputy-marshal's man, or some other person in authority, breaking the heads of both parties.

"Here were, besides, players and mummers, jugglers and showmen, of every description, traversing in joyous bands the paths which led to the Palace of Princely Pleasure; for so the traveling minstrels had termed Kenilworth in the songs which already had come forth in anticipation of the revels which were there expected.

In the midst of this motley show, mendicants were exhibiting their real or pretended miseries, forming a strange though common, contrast betwixt the vanities and the sorrows of human existence . All these floated along with the immense tide of popula tion, whom mere curiosity had drawn together and where the mechanic, in his leather apron, elbowed the dink and dainty dame, his city mistress; where clowns, with hobnailed shoes, were treading on the kibes of substantial burghers and gentlemen of worship; and where Joan of the dairy, with robust pace, and red, sturdy arms, rowed her way onward , amongst those prim and pretty moppets whose sires were knights and squires.

"The throng and confusion was, however, of a gay and cheerful character. All came forth to see and to enjoy, and all laughed at the trifling inconveniences which at another time might have chafed their temper. Excepting the occasional brawls which we have mentioned among that irritable race the carmen, the mingled sounds which arose from the multitude were those of light-hearted mirth and tiptoe jollity.

The musicians preluded on their instruments, the minstrels hummed their songs, the licensed jester whooped betwixt mirth and madness as he brandished his bauble, the morris-dancers jangled their bells, and the rustics halloo'd and whistled, men laughed loud, and maidens giggled shrill, while many a broad jest flew like a shuttle cock from one party, to be caught in the air and returned from the opposite side of the road by another, at which it was aimed."

That central part of England is rich in farming lands now as it was in early Tudor days—miles and miles of wheat and oat fields, rolling pas tures, and grassy hill slopes where flocks of sheep and herds of cattle feed. Here were some of the pioneer sheep runs of the Tudor period.

As one drives into Sulgrave from any quarter he passes through the pleasant woods, the fragrant fields and "the dumpling hills of North amptonshire," along hedged roads, where "hawthorn buds appear," by comfortable farmsteads, thatched cottages, villas and quaint old homes.

Deer may peep out from the woodland shadows. In early spring the whole country is a garden of fruit blossoms. It is then that the pile of old gray stone that is The Washington Manor House has a very bloom upon it and looms blue and ghost-like through a mist of apple blossoms.

What a breath of old times is around it! Old times and old dreams!

Out of the mist ride knights in armor, quaint ladies and lords of the Manor, together with forgotten kings and queens, savage Britons, Roman soldiers, Saxon earls and Norman barons and long processions of cowled monks. All Britain's history comes riding by.

It is the same in many another English village today. Every English 9

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE

THE RESTORED LIVING HALL OF THE WASHINGTONS SHOWING THE RICH OAK SCREEN village is Sulgrave. And Sulgrave is every English village. As Julia Patton says: "Old proverbs and folk-sayings color the speech of the villagers, pleasing the ear with their racy quaintness and giving involuntary expression to an accumulated wisdom beyond that of the individual speakers . Year after year the villagers plant their gardens and sow their fields in unvarying adherence to the order bequeathed them by their fathers and in a dim but satisfying sense of alliance with those past generations of men and women in whose steps they are following. Quaint old songs, cherished festival customs, ancient superstitions, innumerable links connect the village of today with the village of long ago, and give constant reminder of its past.

It is only in the light of this long history that the literature of the English village can be rightly read."

It was Washington Irving who, early in the eighteen-forties, intro duced Sulgrave Manor to America and to the world as one of the ances tral homes of the Washington family. He says of the old house in his Life of Washington: "It was in a quiet, rural neighborhood where the farmhouses were quaint and antiquated. A part only of the Manor house remained, and was inhabited by a 10

THE WASHINGTON MANOR. HOUSE

THE "GREAT CHAMBER" WHERE LAWRENCE WASHINGTON, GRANDFATHER OF JOHN THE EMIGRANT, WAS BORN farmer. The Washington crest, in colored glass, was to be seen in a window of what was now the buttery. Another relic of the ancient manor of the Washingtons was a rookery in a venerable grove hard by. The rooks, those staunch adherents to old family abodes, still hovered and cawed about their hereditary nests. In the pave ment of the parish church we were shown a stone slab bearing effigies on plates of brass of Lawrence Washington, Gentleman, and Aimee, his wife, and their four sons and seven daughters. The inscription in black letter was dated 1654."

At that time Sulgrave was far more inaccessible than it is today.

For many years it was completely isolated because in the beginning of the railroad movement in Great Britain, Northampton, which is the largest town near Sulgrave Parish, objected to having the railroad brought near its own environs for, so its worthy fathers offered, "it would obstruct the water courses and make the shapes of the fields awkward!" Accord ingly Northampton with all of its neighboring towns was left off the main line from London to the North. And few travelers during the past century found their way to the Washington Manor House.

Twenty-five or thirty years after Irving's visit, Albert Welles, an other biographer of Washington, visited Sulgrave Manor. He found the rooks still there in the old elms drooping at the left of the Manor House 11

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE just as they are today. "The house itself, which was all stone, was curiously defaced by plaster which had dropped off giving it a spoiled and, dilapidated look," he says. "There was a dead gable end with two narrow, stopped-up windows and the roof was partly of stone, partly tiled." Mr. Welles noted the luxuriant ivy growth which still mantles the eastern and northern sides of the house and climbs up the gable end to the ridge of the roof. The small court was then fenced in by a low stone wall, partly paved, partly in grass and was occupied by broods of ducks and chickens. Sheds, outhouses, and pigsties defaced the entire right side. The fine old Tudor doorway of brown stone with square-headed mouldings and depressed arch had been converted, so Welles found, into a dairy window by bricking up the lower portion. Of the shields contain ing the Washington arms he says, "The original sharpness had worn off, but they were still clear cut and unmistakable."

That the old Manor House was for a time used as an abode of forest poachers known as "The Culworth Gang" who secreted some of their spoil in Sulgrave church, is stated by another writer, Herbert A. Evans.

In 19o6, when an American tourist, Thomas M. Peck, visited Sulgrave, he found the manor house with one hundred eighty acres of the original estate for sale. "The Washington Estate at Sulgrave is for sale," Mr. Peck wrote in an historical paper published by the Newburgh Society, New York, February, 1907. "It would be greatly appreciated by our countrymen who happen to be traveling in England if some wealthy American would purchase and provide for its preservation, as well as for its being kept as an interesting spot for Americans to visit." Nothing, however, came of this suggestion.

In 19i 1 another effort to arouse American interest in Sulgrave Manor was made by Joseph G. Butler, Jr., of Youngstown, Ohio, who at that time secured an option on the property for $20,000. In his book, My First Trip Abroad, Mr. Butler says of Sulgrave Manor: "The manor is of stone and the interior is finished solid oak. Some of the beams which I measured are two feet thick, and in perfect condition. The upper portions are all sleeping rooms and in good condition also. . . . On the lower floor are the remains of a room, evidently a private chapel, but now used as a hall. On each side of the wall appear carvings. . . . The house has a high gabled roof, upon the out side of which appear the arms of the Washington family. If any doubt exists as to the origin of the American flag, this should dispel the suspicion, as it is repeated wherever the Washington family are in evidence, and always the same.

"There are a number of outhouses of stone and one very large barn, which, with the manor, are in fairly good repair, when it is considered that no one actuated by any particularly patriotic motive is living on the property.

"It seems a strange anomaly that the birthplace of the ancestors of our first and greatest President, should be in the hands of aliens to America, and it at once occurred to me that the property should be acquired by one of our patriotic societies, put in proper condition and with an endowment fund sufficient to care for and maintain it for all time to come, making it a veritable shrine for all patriotic Americans visiting Europe."

Other tourists, writers, artists and antiquarians came to Sulgrave 12

THE WASHINGTON MANOR. HOUSE

THE ORIGINAL OPEN FIREPLACE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY WITH ELIZABETHAN FIRE BACKS Manor from time to time. Some artists have returned again and again, loving the stately beauty of the place. All knew of it regretfully as pass ing into decay.

A portion of the old structure had been pulled down in 1 789 so that it has never been possible to determine how much of the original design had been completed. The entire west side of the house disappeared.

Everything that could have been done to obliterate the beauty of the remainder was done, it seems. Part of the roof fell in and was not re paired. The paneled walls and ceilings of the rooms were plastered and covered with ugly wall paper. The great wide fireplaces were bricked up and supplanted with modern grates and stoves. The ancient living room of the Washingtons was partitioned and the noble entrance blocked up.

The arms and memorials of the Washington family in stained glass, once in the mullioned windows of the living room, were removed. Six of these heraldic glass shields were placed in Fawsley Church, two in Weston Manor House, and the others lost. The grounds lay neglected, tangled in weeds.

The Manor property was thus unkempt and forlorn, all going to 13

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE _ wrack and ruin, when, in i 9i 3 it was bought by the British Peace Cen tenary Committee, as the joint memorial of Britain and America to the century of peace between the two countries. The idea of thus securing the Washington Manor House came originally from an American born woman, Mrs. Victoria Woodhull Martin, and was presented to the British Committee thru the late William B. Howland. With her daughter Miss Woodhull, Mrs. Martin has been for years profoundly interested in furthering the cause of Anglo-American friendship. Her donation towards the purchase price of Sulgrave Manor went far towards enabling the committee to secure the house, out-buildings and about ten acres of land. Subscription lists, then opened to the British public, brought funds for the restoration of the place, and in addition to funds a wide and eager interest throughout England in the purposes of The Sulgrave Institution.

II An Ancient English Village A FTER all it was a great deal more than "just an old house" that was bought; it was a living cross-section of Britain's history. Sulgrave lands were held, and built upon in turn, by the Ro mans, Saxons, Danes and Normans. The original building is said on author ity of Arthur Branscomb, author of The Cradle of the Washingtons and The Home of the Franklins, to have been put up by Earl Simon de St. Liz, the rebuilder of Northampton and the founder of its ancient castle. "The Sul grave property," says Mr. Branscomb, "was be queathed by St. Liz to the Priory of St. Andrew in 1 00,0, by whom it was held until its surrender to the Crown."

Before the Dissolution of St. Andrew's Priory there is evidence that Lawrence Washington rented a "messuage" in where robin goodfellow tiptoes in Sulgrave. The specific 14

record in question is at the Public Record Office of Greatworth near Sulgrave, home of Aimee Pargiter, maternal ancestor of George Washington, and was recently discovered by the Rev. W. G. Cruft, Rector of Greatworth.

There appears to have been a further transaction when not only Sulgrave lands, but several additional properties as well, were granted to Lawrence Washington from King Henry VIII for his services to country and state, or, as it is precisely stated, "in chief by military service."

However when he acquired Sulgrave and these holdings in 1 539, he paid for them a stated sum, and continued to give "the thirtieth part of a knight's fee," whatever that may have meant, "and payment annually of four shillings and seven pence."

There is extant, quoted by T. Pape, an abstract of the Letters Patent re Sulgrave Manor, dated March 10, 1539, by which in consideration of £321 14s iod paid to the Royal Treasurer by Lawrence Washington, he received a grant of the Manor of Sulgrave which had belonged to the Monastery of St. Andrew, with the messuages, mills, etc. Other prop erties are also listed. The Royal seal is attached to this grant.

In the restoration of Sulgrave Manor which has been in progress throughout the past ten years, there have been found various tokens— stones, pieces of paneling, doors and other woodwork which point, not to the sixteenth century, but to a date far more remote for the original construction of certain parts of the house.

The house itself, as has been said, is pure Tudor in design and was built or remodeled from all accounts, by Lawrence Washington on the foundations of the Priory. Members of the Washington family lived here during the reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, King James I, and of James's sons—a period, all told, of about one hundred twenty years.

The first written mention of Sulgrave is in the Domesday Book, that earliest recorded survey of English lands ordered by William the Conqueror in the year 1086. This states that Sulgrave Manor (manor being the term then used for a taxable unit) contained four hundred eighty acres and was held by tenants under Ghilo, brother of Ansculf.

Ghilo was the progenitor of the Pinkeney family, which held the castle.

This stood upon Castle Hill—a mile from Sulgrave village and was built, so legend says, upon the ruins of a Roman encampment. Not a stone is left of this Saxon castle today. From the summit of the hill, or mound, a far range of country is commanded. Nine counties can be seen. In the time of Edward I the vast estate of the Pinkeneys had become divided into three smaller manors, of which one was the property of St. Andrew's Priory in the town of Northampton, the main building of which was erected prior to 1076. That part of Sulgrave Manor which was held by this priory was bought by Lawrence Washington, as has already been mentioned, at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. is

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE W

WHERE ONCE UPON A TIME THE MONKS OF THE OLD PRIORY TOLD THEIR BEADS This Lawrence Washington, the first grantee of Sulgrave Manor, from whom the Virginia branch of the Washingtons sprang, seems to have been a practical and enterprising man and a leader in his community.

He was the son of John Washington of North Lancashire, and Margaret Kitson, whose brother, Sir Thomas Kitson, was one of the pioneer ' 'merchant princes' ' of England .

The Washington family traced their history through several genera tions back to William de Hertburn, "a powerful and noble knight," who, to quote Schroeder and Lossing, "lived a century after William the Con queror, and purchased in the year 1 183, the manor and village of Wessington in the diocese of Durham."

Thus in both Durham and Lancaster there are other and earlier annals in England of the Washington family. Oddly enough these are the genealogical records which are dealt with by many historians of Washington, almost entirely, if not entirely, to the exclusion of the Sul grave Washingtons from whom the line comes direct.

Lawrence Washington of Sulgrave was trained for the law-—was, in fact, "a bencher of Gray's Inn" when he settled in Northampton. But 16

THE WASHINGTON MANOR. HOUSE

THE ORIGINAL OAK TIMBERS COVERED FOR MANY PAST GENERATIONS WITH THICK PLASTER ARE NOW EXPOSED with hard-headed courage and independence, he left "the learned pro fession" and went into sheep breeding and the wool trade, then certainly the most promising industry of the English Midlands.

The early Tudor period marks the beginning of that commercial expansion which was to make the people of England the wealthiest in the world. Before this they had not been distinguished by commercial enterprise. According to A. D. Innes, "The commercial spirit attacked land owners who began to seek a maximum profit out of the land . Acci dent had turned them to the extension of sheep farming when it was not worth while to restore the tillage lands which had fallen out of cultiva tion owing to the Black Death."

To again quote Miss Patton in her study of The English Village of that period: "The conduct of village affairs as with the systems of agriculture was also com munal. On several occasions during the year the commoners met for the settling of affairs of public interest. They discussed matters of the order or variation of crops : they elected the Foreman of the Fields, to give notice when the fields were open for pasture, and a Field Jury, to settle disputes among individuals as to field concerns; 17

THE 'WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE they appointed a common shepherd, a pinner to look after stray cattle, a chimney peeper to keep in condition the chimneys of the village as a protection against fire, and sundry other minor officials whom the affairs of the particular locality called for.

The mill belonged to the lord, and every villager brought to it his share of grain, how ever large or small, to be ground, paying for the privilege in money or services.

The whole economy of the village was like a partnership, in which a farm was owned and operated by a group of persons holding a varying number of shares.

"All these things made for a solidarity in the village community which was fur thered by its practical isolation during many months of the year, when roads were almost impassable, and by its almost complete independence and self-sufficiency.

Each village had its artisans, who belonged to the cottage class and possessed their share of land and of common rights, to supplement the income derived from their special industries. Although during the middle ages various industries tended to become localized in particular centers, they were still carried on largely in cottages, and fundamental industries such as spinning and weaving went on in almost every cottage of the land. Every village raised its own food, made its own clothes and utensils, and conducted its own government, both temporal and spiritual, with very little call upon the outside world."

Thus your villager of England of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries could take care of himself wherever you put him,—self-reliance bred in the bone, the atmosphere free and bracing, the tone honest, the note true. When the descendants of these same country folk, landed gentry, farmers, villagers and cottagers alike, came to people the New World—a world where a Franklin need not and did not sit below the salt of a Washington—a coat-of-arms had slight bearing beside the quali ties of personal force and distinction of spirit engendered by this vil lage life of England during the early Middle Ages. The people of rural England amongst whom the Washingtons lived were a vigorous, common sense folk.

Had not Lawrence Washington quit being a bencher of Gray's Inn to go into the wool trade—shocking business!—he had been doubtless a bencher of Gray's Inn until he died. And may be his sons after him would have been benchers of Gray's Inn until they died! And then there had been perhaps no Washington Manor House in the little vil lage of Sulgrave. Nor had there been injected into the Washington breed the strain that helped the descendants of Lawrence of Sulgrave to make America.

At least it is gratifying to note by actual records that Lawrence Wash ington, first grantee of Sulgrave Manor, came to have an important position in a business and social sense in Northamptonshire. He was one of the original trustees of the Free Grammar School founded by Ed ward VI and served, as has been mentioned, twice as Mayor of North ampton. He was twice married, the second time to Aimee, daughter of Robert Pargiter, of Greatworth. There were children only by the second marriage—seven daughters and four sons. Robert, born in 1 544. the eldest son, was the great-grandfather of John, the first Washington of Virginia.

Lawrence's wife, Aimee Washington, died in 1564, and was buried in the Parish Church of Sulgrave dedicated to St. James, where her hus 18

THE WASHINGTON MANOR. HOUSE band, who died later, in the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Elizabeth, was also buried. Certain of the very traits and qualities of the first Lawrence Washington of Sulgrave—his combination of devotion to agri cultural pursuits with business enterprise, of scholarly equipment with personal leadership—also distinguished his descendant, George Wash ington, who was so thoroughly English in his nature and training, his habits of thought, of speech, of work, and of life.

After Lawrence's death his son Robert, who was then living with his family at Sulgrave Manor, succeeded to the estate in 1584. He was then forty years old. His first wife, mother of his children, was Eliza beth, daughter of Walter Light of Radway, County Warwick. Their eldest son, Lawrence—from whom the Virginia branch of the family descended—was born in the stately bedchamber above the living hall of the Manor House. The cradle standing there today before the an cient fireplace was carved and rocked at this very period.

Clouds meanwhile had been gathering, long before the death of the first Lawrence, over the occu pants of Sulgrave Manor.

Serious financial difficulties pressed upon the Washington family. This is not surprising.

Every business man in Eng land—as every family there of high and low degree—suffered grievously from the wild ex travagancies of their King, Henry VIII, in the latter part of his reign. Referring to the general situation of the time, A. D. Innes says: ' 'Only the debased coin remained in circulation and foreign commer cial transactions were plunged into ruinous disorder. The process of enclosure extended and increased with the redistribution of the mon astic lands. Agricultural depress ion became worse and worse while the sturdy vagabonds increased and multiplied, and trade of every kind suffered. The actual value of the coins issued from the mint fell only to about a seventh of their face value; that is, they contained only about that proportion of the silver which they were supposed to contain. Their purchasing power fell accordingly —a fact otherwise expressed by saying prices rose."

rnm * painting by Stephen Held the fallen sun dial is lifted and the lost garden blooms again 19

THE 'WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE It is therefore not difficult to determine why Lawrence Washington of Sulgrave and his children failed to reap fruits of their labors and were forced to give up Sulgrave. Notwithstanding this the family remained unmitigated Royalists.

Evidently sufficient funds were saved when they moved to Brington to give Robert's grandson Lawrence a university education and to get him started in the first Essex living. There is a tradition in England that ill fortune attended all families holding confiscated lands. At any rate according to an historical paper published in Harper's Magazine, 1879, on The Washington Home in Brington, the Sulgrave lands of St. Andrew's Priory were heavily mortgaged, and in the year 1610 Robert Washington united with his son Lawrence to cut off the entail, and sold the manor house to a nephew, Lawrence Makespeace of London, who in turn left it to his son, Abel Makespeace. Thus although Lawrence's grandchildren and their children left Sulgrave for Great Brington in 1606, the place did not pass out of the Washington family connection until 1659 when it was sold to one Edward Plant.

During the time the Washingtons lived in Sulgrave until the manor passed out of their possession, it was commonly called "Washington's Manor."

When Robert's son Lawrence settled with his family in Great Bring ton, they evidently lived in a far different manner than they had been accustomed to in Sulgrave. Over the doorway of the humble "Washing ton House" in Brington, chiseled in stone, is the inscription, whatever it may have referred to: "The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. Constructa 1606."

Yet it may have been that the condition of the Brington experience, so hard by comparison with the life in Sulgrave Manor, so threw the Washingtons on their own resources that it was in itself a preparation for their future home in Virginia. They, too, like the villagers about them, must needs bake their own bread, make their own clothes, milk their own cows, perhaps—grow their own mustard.

To return a space to Sulgrave, we can however surmise that Robert Washington continued to live at the Manor House with his nephew after its sale, because, as Mr. T. Pape points out in his authoritative study, Sulgrave Manor House and the Washington Family, "In his will made on 7th February, 1619, and proved on 3rd January, 1620, Robert Washington wrote: 'My body to be buried in the South Aisle of the church before my seat, where I usually sit, under the same stone that my father lieth buried under.' " Robert Washington's son, Lawrence, who was concerned in the Sul grave sale in 1610, and who settled in Great Brington in 1606, died before his father in 1616 and was buried in Brington.

From the year 165a, when Sulgrave Manor passed out of the owner ship of any connection of the Washington family, until 1840, when Honorable Henry Hely Hutchinson, Colonel in Her Majesty's Army, 20

THE WASHINGTON MANOR. HOUSE

THE MANOR HOUSE HAS REVIVED ITS ANCIENT GRACE AND NOBLE APPEARANCE bought the place, it had a long succession of different owners, few of whom lived there. It was occupied a large part of the time by tenant farmers. Colonel Hutchinson's grandson owned the property, which he, too, had leased to a farmer, when it was purchased in 1913 by the British Peace Centenary Committee.

Lawrence Washington of Brington had a son, also named Lawrence, through his marriage to Margaret Butler. It was this third Lawrence, Rector of Purleigh, to whom the family gave a university education, and who later suffered the vicissitudes so vividly related by Woodrow Wilson in his Life of Washington. This Lawrence of Brington married Amphillis (Bouden?) Rhoadesand it was two of their sons, John and Lawrence, who emigrated to Virginia. It is this John Washington, always referred to by historians as "the emigrant," who was the great-grandfather of George Washington.

Speaking of the third Lawrence of Brington, who died in 1653, Mr. Wilson says: "The Reverend Lawrence Washington had been cast out of his living at Purleigh in 1643 by order of Parliament, upon the false charge that he was a public tippler, oft drunk, and loud to rail against the Parliament and its armies; but really because, 21

THE 'WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE with all his race, he was a royalist, and his living one of the best in Essex. It was his sons who left off hoping to see things mend in England, and betook themselves to Virginia. His ruin had come upon him while they were yet lads. He had been a brilliant university scholar, fellow and lector of Brasenose, and rector of Oxford, but he could give his sons neither a university career nor hope of fortune in the humble parish pitying friends had found for him in an obscure village of Essex; and when he was dead they saw no reason why they should stay longer in England, where Cromwell was master.

"John Washington, the oldest son of the unfortunate rector, reached Virginia in 1656, having made his way to the colony as 'second man' to Edward Prescott, mer chant and shipowner, in whose company he had come."

As Mr. Wilson ascertained, John was joined later by his brother Lawrence, and both made permanent settlement in Westmoreland County upon the "northern neck" of the rich land that lay between the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers. "It was a region where every settlement as yet was new," continues Mr. Wilson. "A few families had fixed themselves upon it when Maryland drove Captain Clayborn and his Virginian partisans forth from Kent Island in the years 1637 and 1638, and they mustered numbers enough within a few years to send a representative to the House of Burgesses at Jamestown."

This young emigrant came then from England to America with little, so it seems, but the pack upon his back—"second man to Edward Prescott." But he flung himself into the new life, robust and courageous.

According to the Virginia tradition, John Washington was a surveyor.

"It is quite apparent that he was a forehanded person who acquired property and impressed himself upon his neighbors. In 1667, when he had been but ten years in the Colony, he was chosen to the House of Burgesses; and eight years later he was made a colonel and sent with a thousand men to join the Marylanders in destroying the Susquenhannocks, at the Piscataway fort, on account of some murdering begun by another tribe."

Thus it may be read that the qualities he brought from England, derived from that very Lawrence of Sulgrave stood him in good stead.

This John Washington married Ann, daughter of Nathaniel Pope.

In addition to the Bridges' Creek property and other lands in Westmore land County, John Washington became in 1674 (with Nicholas Spencer) joint owner of a five thousand acre tract in Fairfax County, along the west bank of the Potomac River, by grant of Lord Culpepper. This tract, then known as The Hunting Creek Plantation, was given in pay ment for services given by John Washington and Nicholas Spencer for their mutual venture in bringing into the province, according to an act of the General Assembly, one hundred immigrants from England as settlers. John's portion of this tract, 2500 acres, descended to his greatgrandson, Lawrence, half-brother of George Washington. Lawrence built his homestead there in 1743 and named the place Mount Vernon in honor of the British Admiral under whom he had served.

At Lawrence's death in 1752, this beautiful estate came into the pos session of George Washington. Thus the once wild tract of forest, hill 22

THE WASHINGTON MANOR. HOUSE and river land granted to John the Emigrant, was destined to become the home—and the last resting place—of the Father of His Country. And generations later through the prayers and labors of a group of American women, led by Anne Pamela Cunningham of South Carolina, Mount Vernon was given to the Nation and the world as a shrine of pilgrimage, even as Sulgrave Manor is now given.

The son of John Washington the Emigrant and his wife, Ann Pope, was named Lawrence, after his grandfather, the Rector of Purleigh.

He, too, was a planter, a fighter and a leader. He married Mildred Warner of Virginia and Augustine Washington was a son of this marriage.

By this time connection with the families' relatives in England had practically ceased. Old memories had grown dim. The Washington coat of arms alone remained the link binding the family to England.

Where wife and children were—Virginia—there was home. Times were too hard. Faces must be set towards tomorrow. Never a chance, a need, or a desire, to think and dream on yesterday.

Augustine Washington was again a planter as his father and grand father before him. He married twice, the second time to Mary Ball, "celebrated for her beauty," a daughter of Virginia like his mother and grandmother. And of this marriage on the 22nd of February in the year 1732, "about 10 in the morning" George Washington was born. "He came into the world," writes Woodrow Wilson, "at the plain but spacious homestead at Bridges' Creek, fourth son, fifth child of Augustine Wash ington, and of the third generation of John Washington, son of the one time rector of Purleigh," the rector of Purleigh as we have traced, being the great-grandson of Lawrence Washington, first grantee of Sulgrave Manor.

Of his English ancestors George Washington knew nothing worthy of mention. The Washington coat of arms—red and white signifying purity and bravery, the stars—rowels of the spur—with all that meant of dare and action, had been bequeathed to him by his father as it had been to all his brothers. Exitus acta probat ran its legend. No doubt it was cherished by him, perhaps for its symbolism—mystic link that bound the family to the Mother Country. The fact that it was attached by him as a seal to Commissions of some of the earlier officers of the Revolu tionary army, shows that he held it high.

Ill Present-Day Glimpses l_IOW does the Washington Manor House seem today? No longer is A it the forlorn and dilapidated place over which American travelers have so lamented. Upon reaching the village of Sulgrave, one passes down "Big Street" clear to the eastern end where Madam's Close, em braced by ancient elms, merges into the hedge-bordered highway which separates the Manor House from the village.

23

THE \ÂŤASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE

ARMORIAL GLASSES IN THE MULLIONED WINDOWS CARRY THE QUARTERED BEARINGS OF THE WASHINGTON FAMILY It is a gabled limestone building two stories high, with dormer win dows, steep stone roof and four great chimneys. Under the intelligent and sympathetic hand of the English architect and master craftsman, Sir Reginald Blomfield, R. A., directed by the Sulgrave Institution, it is reviving its ancient grace and noble appearance.

The part of the Manor facing South containing the Washington arms, is the oldest, evidently built on the foundations of the ancient priory.

A niche held by some antiquarians to be for holy water, by others for salt, is on the left of the doorway. In all large houses of the period, says Stephen Reid, there was such a washing place for use when the family came to meals. A vestige of the old priory is seen in a box-like structure in the passage, which is the door to the ancient cellar, while on the projecting bay, which forms the main entrance to the Manor House, there is a shield, embossed, in plaster, with the arms defaced, considered by antiquarians to be those of the prior of the monastery.

The most interesting and important feature of this Tudor doorway to Americans—is of course the Washington coat of arms. The bars and mullets of these arms are sunk instead of in relief, and are placed directly 24

THE WASHINGTON MANOR. HOUSE over the entrance which has a four-centered arch under a square head and label. The arms in the right spandrel remain today just as they were carved nearly four hundred years ago, but the arms in the left spandrel have been defaced by the weather. This same. coat of arms is also emblazoned on the Washington tomb slabs in Sulgrave and Brington churches and is to be seen in a number of church windows of the English midlands. It is the coat of arms borne as we have told by all of George Washington's immediate forbears in Virginia, John, Lawrence and Augustine and by George Washington, himself "and in the chief three mullets stood" as in the arms of Douglas. To quote the Archaeologi cal Society (British) : "In the red and white bars and the stars of his shield and the eagle issuant from his crest, borne later by General Washington, the framersof the (American) Constitu tion got their idea of the stars and stripes and the spread-eagle of the national emblem . . . . Only an advance upon the bar gules, the three mullets and the raven of the old shield of the Washingtons of Sulgrave Manor."

The flag of the Southern Confederacy was also adapted from the Washington family coat of arms. At the beginning of the War Between the States when the seceding States felt they must have the arms of Gen eral Washington—their own Virginian—somehow represented in their flag, and as the Federal Government had already chosen the stars and stripes, they selected the stars and bars as the foundation of their flag, using it also for the battle flag of the Confederacy,—-The Southern Cross, a blue St. Andrew edged with white on a red field with stars along the arms.

In addition to the Washington arms and those of the prior of St. Andrew's Priory in the South Porch of Sulgrave Manor, the royal Tudor arms are also graven here. These show the Lion and Dragon as supporters, not the later Lion and Unicorn which came into the royal arms with James I. They are in the gable which surmounts a quaint, small-paned window above the prior's arms,—lilies of France and the lions of England with the letters E. R. probably for Elizabeth Regina.

This main entrance, so long blocked up, leads into what was once upon a time the living hall, or dining hall of the Washingtons, a large, square room of stately dimensions with dark oak beams, stone-mullioned windows, and at one end, under a four centered arch, a giant fireplace with its ingle nook, and pot bar and chains. As Irving tells us this was the room formerly used as a dairy or buttery by the tenant farmers.

Under the advice of Sir Reginald Blomfield it has been most carefully and beautifully restored to its original Tudor condition. The old oak screen which formerly divided the narrow entrance passage from the great hall of the house has been replaced and the plastered partition removed. The original oak timbers covered for the past generation with thickly plastered ceilings are now exposed. Credit for the restoration of this particular portion, according to a bronze tablet in the hall, belongs to The Colonial Dames of America, which organization was the very first 25

THE 'WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE among the American patriotic societies to come forward with the offer of assistance when the Manor property was bought.

Some valuable and exquisite pieces of Jacobean furniture have been contributed by various societies and individuals to equip this stately room, as well as every other portion of the manor, and the remainder has been purchased under the direction of Lady Lee of Fareham inbehalfofthe governors of The Sulgrave Institution. The central object in the re stored great hall is the Stuart picture of George Washington unveiled at the dedication ceremonies in 1 0,2 1 . This is one of the few contemporary portraits of the first President of the American republic in existence, and is the gift to Sulgrave Manor of Miss Faith Moore of Philadelphia.

Another interesting picture in the hall is the painting of George Washing ton as Colonel Commanding the Virginian Colonial troops after a portrait painted in 1772 by Charles Wilson Peale, now in Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va. This was presented to Sulgrave by The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.

The armorial glasses in the mullioned windows carrying the quartered bearings of the Washingtons are reproductions of the original six which were removed as has been mentioned years ago to Fawsley and Weston.

All of the details of interior decoration and furnishing have been a labor of love on the part of a small group of women members of the British Branch of The Sulgrave Institution, among whom are Mrs. Martin, Miss Woodhull, Mrs. George Harvey, Lady Arthur Herbert, Lady Lee of Fareham, Lady Rathcreedon, and the Countess of Sandwich. Mrs. Martin, Mrs. Harvey and Lady Lee of Fareham are American women.

The late Lady Paget, also an American woman, gave the entire year preceding her death in 1919, to working out plans for the furnishing of Sulgrave Manor. Only such furniture and household features as be longed to the Tudor and Jacobean periods of the house have been used.

A handsome dark oak Jacobean stair-case with spiral oak balusters finely colored by age leads from the ground floor to the large bed-chamber above the living hall. At the top of the stairs is "Queen Elizabeth's Cupboard" already spoken of, and a door beyond opens into the upper por tion of the Tudor buildings where the antique quality of the rooms is em phasized by the carved oak roof structure. During the occupancy of Sul grave by the various tenant farmers, the "Great Chamber" like the living hall had also been "modernized" to a deplorable degree, ceiled and par titioned, while the original fireplace had been bricked over and made to take a present-day grate. When the partition and ceiling were removed, the old timbers of the open roof, of most beautiful and unusual form, were revealed, and they have been cleaned and left in their original state.

The removal of the ugly grate revealed the existence of three successive fireplaces. Directly back of the modern one was a plastered fireplace of Queen Anne date and behind that the original open fireplace of the sixteenth century, corresponding in size and character to that in the hall down-stairs. An Elizabethan sixpence was found on this old mantel.

26

THE WASHINGTON MANOR. HOUSE

From a painting by Stephen Eeid IN EARLY SPRING THE ANCIENT MANOR HOUSE HAS A VERY BLOOM UPON IT AND LOOMS BLUE AND GHOST-LIKE THRU A MIST OF APPLE BLOSSOMS There are, today, in this "Great Chamber," some interesting examples of Jacobean furniture, a four-post bedstead given by The Stars and Stripes Club of Manchester, with a contemporary needlework quilt, a chest of drawers, a skin covered trunk, a carved oak chair and tapestry, chests, face bowls, cradle and Elizabethan fire backs. In this room was born Lawrence's grandson, Lawrence, son of Robert and Elizabeth (Light) whose own grandson, John Washington, established the family in the New World.

The small room beyond the "Great Chamber" still has its modern ceiling which undoubtedly conceals rare timber roofing, as did that of the adjoining room. When the funds permit it is intended by the Sulgrave Institution to restore this also. The articles of interest here are the pictures. A portrait of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother, from a painting from life, owned by W. Lanier Washington, hangs here as the gift of that gentleman. Next to it is a portrait of George Washington, on the back of which is the inscription: "This por trait of George Washington is the property of the Mayor and Town Clerk of Banbury, to whom it was handed by the Empire State Society Sons of 27

THE>Xfr\SHINGTON MANOR HOUSE the American Revolution of New York for the purpose of being hung in the Manor House at Sulgrave and who hold it upon trust for that object.

Should circumstances ever arise through which it ceases to be so hung, it is to be returned to their hands. June, i9o9." In this room are some autograph letters from George Washington and a number of silhouettes of members of Washington's family, given by the late Lord Northcliffe.

In an adjoining smaller room there is a sketch of Sulgrave Church, painted in 1830, by George Washington Smith of Litchfield, showing the building as it stood before the restoration. This church, built in the decorated style of the fourteenth century, is situated at the west end of the village. In the south aisle is the seat belonging to the owners of Sulgrave Manor. In front of it on the floor of the aisle is a gray slab, with brasses inscribed with the names of the Washingtons buried there and showing the family crest.

During the closing years of Queen Victoria's reign a group of Ameri cans, in zeal to out-Victorian the Victorians, "restored" the historic church, "improved" the ancient seating out of it, in particular the family pew of the Washingtons, and put in modern seating. Sir Charles Wakefield, who with Lord Weardale, is joint treasurer of the British Branch of The Sulgrave Institution, and is ever diligent in search of Sulgrave antiquities, discovered three pieces of this beautiful Elizabethan paneling of the Lawrence Washington pew and bought them forthwith.

Inasmuch as British Sulgrave is always giving presents to American Sulgrave, and vice versa, Sir Charles in June, 1922, presented the rare paneling to Chief Justice William Howard Taft, one of the Board of Gover nors of the American Branch of The Sulgrave Institution. The gift, however, was conditional. It must be given back to Sulgrave, restored to its old site, Sir Charles said, "the place where who can tell what dreams were dreamt and visions seen which have affected the history of America."

Doubtless the Chief Justice had demurred . . . may even have said with that chuckle of his, "Indian giver!" had it not been all in the family. The little ceremony of presenting the paneling took place at Sulgrave Manor. Ambassador Harvey presided, sitting on one of the terraces in Madam's Close, beneath a stately walnut tree. Sir Charles and Lady Wakefield, Sir Sidney and Lady Lee, Sir Herbert Spicer, Mr. Perris, Mayor Whiting of Northampton, Councillor Boddington of Brackley, Mayor Mawle of Banbury, together with the mayors of the local boroughs were among those present. The Mayors of Nottingham and Banbury presented Mr. Taft with copies of the records of their towns.

The Mayor of Banbury added, by the way, for Mrs. Taft, a box of the famous Banbury Cakes.

Another valuable gift beside the paneling given through Sir Charles Wakefield to Sulgrave is a deed relating to some property in Bedfordshire, dated 1599, and signed by Robert Washington, who was at that date in 28

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE possession of Sulgrave. A large seal is appended to the parchment and shows a perfect impression of the Washington arms.

A replica of the Lodge Bible of St. John's Masonic Lodge, on which George Washington took the oath of office as first President of the United States, has also been placed in Sulgrave Manor by Andrew B. Humphrey, Secretary of the American Branch of The Sulgrave Institution on behalf of the Lodge.

At the ceremonies of this First Presidential Inauguration, which took place April 30, 1 789, in Wall Street, New York City, on the present site of the United States Sub-Treasury Building, the officials in charge had neglected to provide a Bible. Members of St. John's Masonic Lodge, which was near by, quickly loaned the Lodge Bible. Washington, being a brother Mason, this Bible has been a cher ished possession of the Lodge ever since.

Mr. Harding, also a brother Mason, took the oath as President of the United States on this same Bible, March 4, 1922, on the steps of the Capitol at Washington.

Two replicas of this Bible have been made. Thru the good offices of Judge Townsend M. Scudder of New York these were secured from St. Johns' Lodge, one for the American Branch of the Sulgrave Institution, and one for the British Branch.

Every gift, every ar ticle and piece of furniture placed in the Washington Manor House is in itself of intrinsic value, being contemporaneous with the original period of the house. In the restoration work the greatest care has been taken to preserve the original features of the timber roofs, the ancient oak door with hand-made lock and key 29

THE>XiASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE fireplaces, the ancient oak doors to rooms and cupboards, with the old hand-made locks and keys. The outside masonry work, walls, gateposts, terrace construction, new roads, driveway and paths, and fore-court, and, above all, the gardens are recreated in the sixteenth century pattern. Several acres have been planted in lavender and a Sulgrave keepsake today is a bunch of the fragrant mint.

The view of the outside of the house from the court is a delight. So many windows, so many doors,—each with a charm of its own, each with its old, old memories and stories of far off times and bygone men and women. They come out of the haunted rooms, meet pleasantly here and smile in the morning sun. Yes, the sense of home has come back to the old house,—home and quiet order and peace.

With vision of this in background one can come better to understand the character of George Washington—why he yearned so for "the beloved shades of Mount Vernon," and why, as the fighting general of a victorious army, he wrote as in this letter to one of his close friends: "The more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs, the better I am pleased with them; insomuch, that I can no where find so great satisfaction as in those innocent and useful pursuits. In indulging these feelings, I am led to reflect how much more delightful to an undebauched mind is the task of making improvements on the earth than all the vain glory which can be acquired from ravaging it, by the most uninterrupted career of conquests."

IV The Sulgrave Institution QUICKENING the work of The Sulgrave Institution is the spirit of George Washington—the idea of peace, the urge for constructive purpose and action—for "making improvements on the earth."

When the Washington Manor House was bought in 19i 3 by the British Peace Centenary Committee, it was, as we have told, with the purpose of dedicating it as a national memorial of the century of peace, 1814-1914, between Great Britain and the United States, as historically recorded in the Treaty of Ghent signed on Christmas eve, 1814.

The movement for this international celebration was originated by John A. Stewart of New York early in 1908. The American National Committee for the celebration was organized by Mr. Stewart in 19o9, with the late Theodore Roosevelt as honorary chairman and the late Andrew Carnegie as chairman. About two years later a similar com mittee was formed in England with the late Lord Gray as president, the late William B. Howland representing the American Committee.

These two men, with Robert Donald of The London Chronicle, H. S. Perris and Mrs. Martin, were the initiators of the movement in England.

In 19i 3 the Marquess of Cambridge, brother of Queen Mary of England, became the honorary president of the British Committee.

30

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE It was proposed by the Peace Centenary Committee to commemorate this treaty event on Christmas Eve, 1914, by ceremonies throughout the United States and the British Empire. The program was carried out in churches and schools in various sections of Canada and the United States, at New Orleans, Fort Erie, Plattsburg and Lake Erie. The British Committee, as the first project on its own program, purchased The Washington Manor House at Sulgrave. Just as the work of re storation was set going the World War engulfed the nations.

While the Treaty of Ghent celebration necessarily had a quick halt, it was but marking time, for there grew out of the idea the permanent marching movement for Anglo-American-Celtic friendship as laid down in the charter of The Sulgrave Institution. For Mr. Stewart suggested that around the Washington Manor House there might be formed a fellowship for furthering friendship and preventing misunderstanding between English speaking peoples and between them and other peoples of good will, an idea that was formally ratified at the American Embassy in London, March 8, 1914, by the Sulgrave Board of Trustees.

It was in this way that The Sulgrave Institution originated. Branches were organized both in Great Britain and the United States and are today fast spreading throughout other points in the British Commonwealth, in France, Italy, Belgium, South America, Japan, China, Denmark, Holland and other nations. In Canada, where a committee was organized about 19i 5 under the direction of the Premier, Robert Laird Borden, with Sir George Perley, Sir Edmund Walker and Mackenzie King as its leaders, the interest is pronounced. E. H. Scammell of the De partment of Soldiers' Civil Re-estab lishment, Ottawa, is secretary of the Canadian Branch. President HardinE is the honorary chancellor of the American Branch. Alton B. Parker is chancellor. The Brit ish Ambassader, Sir Auckland Geddes, is honorary vice-chan cellor, and John A. Stewart executive chairman. The Amer ican Ambassador, the Honorable George Harvey, is the honorary chairman of the British Branch, and H. S. Perris, M.A., its sec retary and director, with head quarters in London.

Sulgrave Manor was turned over by the Peace Centenary Committee to a Board of Trustees comprised equally

THE 'WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE of British and American members, "to be forever maintained as a place of pilgrimage for all who venerate the name of that Colonial English man who became the Father of the American Republic."

The maintenance of the Manor House with its furnishing and re habilitation is but one achievement out of many in the interesting pro gram of work already done by The Sulgrave Institution. Thruout the Great War service was given to Britain and her allies by The Sulgrave Institution, with the late Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph N. Choate and James Bryce actively enlisted. The centenary of the Rush-Bagot Agreement, which removed armaments from the American-Canadian frontier, was celebrated by Sulgrave in 1917. In 1918 Sulgrave's most conspicuous act of friendship was the inauguration of British Com monwealth Day, an event commemorating the valor in war and service in peace of the British Commonwealth widely celebrated in American towns and cities.

Thru Sulgrave were presented the first statues of Abraham Lincoln to be given citizens of Great Britain. One, a replica of George Gray Barnard's statue of Lincoln in Cincinnati, Ohio, was given to the city of Manchester by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Phelps Taft, and Judge Alton B. Parker delivered the address at its unveiling; the other, a replica of the St. Gaudens' statue in Chicago, 111., was erected in London, the gift of Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, Hon. Elihu Root, Hon. Henry White and others thru the Anglo-American Society Associated with British Sulgrave Institution. Other memorials of Lincoln given to the English cities of Hingham and Birmingham were Lincoln Gettysburg Memorial tablets on behalf of Hingham Memorial Association of America, Dr. Milo H. Gates, Chairman, Robert T. Lincoln and George F. Kunz, Vice-Chairmen.

Speaking of these statues, Mr. Perris says: "The Barnard statue of Lincoln standing in Piatt Field's Park in the city of Manchester, and the St. Gauden's statue of Lincoln placed in London in Canning Square amid our English statesmen opposite Westminster Abbey, are helping greatly to interpret the American to the British people and to strengthen those ties of kinship and common purpose which unite the best elements among our two peoples. The horrible sufferings which have fallen upon the world during the past few years were not without a natural causation.

The fruit grew—then as always—'after its kind.'

Is not the time come for the sowing of a different and a better crop in the harvest field of in ternational relations? We, of the Sulgrave Institution, at least, believe so; and we invite all men and women of good will to share with us the joy and satisfaction of a campaign whose victories are enlarged under standings, widened horizons and ever growing friendship."

Busts of George Washington have been given by the American Branch of The Sulgrave Institution to Sulgrave, London and Liverpool. Serv ices commemorative of Washington's Birthday are held under the auspices of The Sulgrave Institution every year in St. Paul's Chapel, 32

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE New York City. This was the chapel invariably attended by President Washington during his residence in New York, and the Washington pew is preserved here in its original box formation .

A lectureship on American History and Institutions for English col leges under endowment of $100,000 has been founded through the gift of Sir George Watson. This lectureship was inaugurated by the late Viscount Bryce at the Mansion House, London, on June 30th, 1921 . It was held during 1922 by Dr. Arthur T. Hadley, of Yale University.

Under this Foundation there was published Viscount Bryce's last lecture with an edition de luxe copy for the President of the United States.

An establishment of scholarships at the State School of Agriculture, Morrisville, New York, has been made through gift from The Lafayette Fund, John Moffat, Chairman; and scholarships through Dr. Elmer Burritt Bryan of Colgate University, Dr. Booth Colwell Davis of Alfred University, and others.

An interchange of pulpit, college, and working newspaper men is an important part of the Sulgrave plan. It is also its purpose to mark in England, Ireland and Holland the ancestral homes of presidents of the United States.

It was at the initiation of The Sulgrave Institution that the move ment started for the commemoration of the beginning of the free institu tions of America, that extraordinary movement which resulted in an international celebration throughout England, Holland and the United States of, first, the meeting at Jamestown, Virginia, of the First Legisla tive Assembly in America when the Bill of Rights was engendered; and second, the Coming of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Signing of the Mayflower Compact. A full tide of Pilgrim and Cavalier literature, pictures, exhibits, pageants, plays, and Tercentenary ceremonies and Magna Charta celebrations rolled over the entire land—its fountain source, The Washington Manor House in England.

An exchange of memorial statuary, paintings, tablets, and publica tions is fostered by the fellowship. A painting of The Signing of the Treaty of Ghent by A. Forestier, R.A., was presented by the American Branch of The Sulgrave Institution through Barron Collier of New York, to the government of the United States at the National Museum in Washington, D.C., in May, 1922. Chief Justice Taft made the speech of acceptance in behalf of the Government. A painting of The Wash ington Manor House at Sulgrave, by Stephen Reid, was also given on this date by The American Committee to President and Mrs. Harding.

True to its slogan "International Good Will and Hospitality," the American Branch of The Sulgrave Institution has officially received and entertained H. R. H. The Prince of Wales and suite, the Secretary of State, the British Ambassador, the American Ambassador to Great Britain, the Premier of Canada, the Premier of Newfoundland, Vis count Bryce, General John J . Pershing, Earl Beatty, and various British, Dutch and Canadian delegations coming to the United States from time 33

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE to time. Both the American and British peoples have been generous with their money in furthering the various plans and purposes of The Sulgrave Institution. In recognition of this help a Founders and Fellows Memorial in bronze, giving the names of benefactors, will eventually be placed in Sulgrave Manor. The Board of Governors of The Sulgrave Institution is endeavoring to raise a foundation adequate to carry on permanently the causes and projects for which the institution stands.

At the formal opening of Sulgrave Manor, its dedication as a House of Peace in June of 1921, the Marquess of Cambridge represented the Royal Family of Great Britain. The little village of Sulgrave became host to a gathering of several thousand people from many sections of the United States, Canada and England.

It was Great Britain's first official recognition of George Washington, the man and the American. The ceremony was without precedent in English history. Arches of flags and flowers spanned the two streets of Sulgrave village, Big Street and Little Street. The bells of old St. J ames Church rang a peal of welcome as the crowds came together. The ceremonies of the day began with a service in this mediaeval church where Lawrence Washington, the first grantee of Sulgrave Manor and his family were buried . The ancient pulpit was draped with the British and American flags. The Bishop of the Diocese read an exhortation from the altar steps and prayed that the example of the life and character of George Washington might yet be potent for uniting in a closer bond the citizens of the United States of America and the British Dominions. From Sulgrave Church the people passed in long procession to the Manor House grounds.

Here the Marquess of Cambridge presided over the ceremony at a table draped with the American flag.

A bust of George Washington, the first ever given to England, was unveiled by John A. Stewart and presented to the people of Great Britain through the Sulgrave Institution as a gift of the American people.

President Harding was the honorary chairman of the Committee of Presentation. The bust is a work in bronze by William Ordway Par tridge after the Houdon life mask, and it was placed in Sulgrave Manor.

The prayer of dedication of the Manor House was read by the Bishop of Peterborough after which the silver key which unlocked the historic entrance door was given to Mrs. George Harvey, wife of the American Ambassador, by Lady Lee of Fareham. This "key of unity," a replica of the large key of the Manor House, was later sent to the President of the United States and Mrs. Harding by The Sulgrave Institution.

Following the opening of the Manor House, the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington was unveiled by Mrs. Harvey.

A letter from Mrs. Victoria Woodhull Martin was read announcing her bequest to The Sulgrave Institution of the Old Manor House at Bredon's Norton and adjacent property, Hermes Lodge, to be used also as a center of work for the Sulgrave movement. "The only condition which will be attached to the transfer of this property," said Mrs. Martin, 34

THE WASHINGTON MANOR- HOUSE "will be that it shall always be devoted to the furtherance of AngloAmerican amity." Hermes Lodge and The Old Manor House at Bredon's Norton are among the most beautiful estates in England.

The dedication ceremonies closed with the presentation to The Wash ington Manor House of a British and an American flag. The British flag was given by The Pilgrim Society of England, the American flag by Mr. Humphrey on behalf of The Sons of The American Revolution.

They were placed—crossed—over the Washington portrait in the living hall. The music of old country dances of Elizabethan times tinkled through the mullioned windows. The little children of Sulgrave Village were dancing Sellenger's Round and Gathering Peascods in Madam's Close.

The gift of this ancient Manor House in the heart of the English Midlands, associated for so many generations with the family of the Father of the American Republic, is indeed a significant token of the bond of friendship existent between the two countries. Every phase of Sulgrave history, as of all of England's early history, is the common heri tage of both America and Britain. Everything in and around the Wash ington Manor House really belonged to America before America was born.

35

THE \05<\SH!NGTON MANOR HOUSE THE SULGRAVE INSTITUTION OFFICERS OF THE AMERICAN BRANCH Honorary Chancellor, Warren G. Harding W. O. Hart Honorary Vice-Chancellors, William Jennings Bryan, Edward W. Hatch Thomas W. Gregory, Henry Cabot Lodge, Thomas John Grier Hibben Herbert C. Hoover R. Marshall, Elihu Root Chancellor, Alton B. Parker Andrew B. Humphrey Executive Chairman, John A. Stewart George F. Kunz Mrs. Joseph R. Lamar Treasurer, L. Gordon Hamersley Col. f. N. Lewis Secretary, Andrew B. Humphrey Mrs. Peter W. Meldrim Depository, J . P. Morgan 67 Co. Mrs. George Maynard Minor Auditors, Perley Morse 62 Co. Robert C. Morris Perley Morse BOARD OF GOVERNORS* Chase S. Osborn Theodore Roosevelt (in memoriam) Alton B. Parker William Howard Taft Charles Evans Hughes John J. Pershing Mrs. Thomas J. Preston, Jr. James M. Beck Louis Livingston Seaman Charles S. Bryan George W. Burleigh Albert Shaw William S. Sims Joseph G. Butler, Jr. John A. Stewart, Chairman Bennehan Cameron George Sutherland Miss Amelia D. Campbell William A. Clark Ambrose Swasey Charles Phelps Taft Barron Collier Mrs. William Rufflin Cox T. Kennard Thomson Rt. Rev. James H. Darlington Roland G. Usher George E . Vincent John W. Davis Charles Stewart Davison Mrs. Eva Follet Warner W . Lanier Washington Mrs. J . Malcolm Forbes James Cardinal Gibbons (in memoriam) Leonard Wood â&#x2122;¦Chairmen Standing Committees Members ex-officio Samuel Gompers L . Gordon Hamersley COMMITTEES Women's Committee, Amelia D. Campbell, National International Organizations, James M. Beck, Chair Chairman, Ethel Armes, Chairman Executive man InternationalQuestions, George Sutherland, Chairman Committee Advisory Council, Charles W. Eliot, Honorary Chair Law and Legislation, Edward W. Hatch, Chairman man, William A. Clark, Chairman, James B. Stew Membership, Charles S. Bryan, Chairman National Affairs, Charles Phelps Taft, Chairman art, Secretary Church Co-Operation, JamesH. Darlington, Chairman Publications, W. Lanier Washington, Chairman Co-Operation Patriotic Organizations, Bennehan Cam Relations with Canada and Newfoundland, Chase S. eron, Chairman Osborn, Chairman Editorial Board, Henry Cabot Lodge, Honorary Scholarships, Charles Stewart Davison, Chairman Chairman, Albert Shaw, Chairman Depository, J . P. Morgan 62 Company Educational Extension, Roland G. Usher, Chairman Auditors, Perley Morse &l Co. International Hospitality, George W. Burleigh, Annual ReportPiled with, R. G. Dun & Co. Chairman OFFICERS OF THE BRITISH BRANCH Honorary Chairman, H . E . The American Am Lord Rathcreedan bassador, The Hon. George Harvey Sir W, George Watson, Bt. Honorary Treasurer, Lord Weardale Sir Sidney Lee, D. Litt.

Secretary and Director, H. S. Perris, Central Bldgs., Sir Harry Brittain, K. B. E., M. Sir Sam Fay London Consul-General R. P. Skinner BOARD OF GOVERNORS The Mayor of Northampton Marquis of Crewe, K. G. Mr. Robert Donald Earl Curzon of Kedleston, K. G. Mr. J . L. Garvin Earl Spencer, K. G. Lady (Arthur) Herbert Viscount Bryce, O. M. (in memoriam) Lady Lee of Fareham Viscount Burnham Mrs. Woodhull Martin Viscount Cowdray Lady Rathcreedan Viscount Northcliffe (in memoriam) Countess of Sandwich Lord Weardale CANADIAN BRANCH E. H. Scammell, Secretary, Ottawa 36

THE WASHINGTON MANOR. HOUSE TRUSTEES OF SULGRAVE MANOR Viscount Bryce (in memoriam) Mr. Charles Phelps Taft Mr. J . P. Morgan Viscount Cowdray Major-General Leonard Wood Earl Spencer Mr. John A. Stewart Sir Harry E. Brittain Mr. H. S. Perris, Secretary Lord Weardale Mr. Robert Donald PATRON AND FOUNDER MEMBERS H. E. Huntington, New York, N. Y; Arthur F. Adams, Kansas City, Mo. Mrs. Sarah J. MacM. Huntington, Columbus, Ohio F. C. Austin, Chicago, 1ll.

Frederick F. Ayer, Boston, Mass.

Robert L. Ireland, New York, N. Y. Mrs. Francis E. Bacon. Riverside, Cal. Arthur Curtiss James, New York Mrs. Ethel duPont Barksdale, Wilmington. Del. James N. Jarvie, New York Joseph A. Jeffrey, Columbus, O. E. Pierson Beebe, Boston, Mass.

Edward J. Berwind, New York, N. Y. Miss Annie B. Jennings, New York, N. Y. George P. Bissell, Wilmington, Del. Alba B. Johnson, Rosemont, Pa. John McE. Bowman, New York, N. Y. Frederic A. Juilliard, New York, N. Y. Daniel Kelleher, Seattle, Wash.

James Brown, New York Henry E. Bullock, Chicago, 1ll.

Mrs. Alice E. Kingsbury, Waterbury, Conn.

Charles Lanier, New York, N. Y. George Burnham, Jr., Philadelphia. Pa. Henry Denison Burnham, Boston, Mass.

Josiah M. Larell, Whitensville, Mass.

Joseph G. Butler, Jr., Youngstown, O. S. Forry Laucks, York, Pa. Joseph Leiter, Washington, D. C. Charles S. Bryan, New York. N. Y. I . Newton Lewis, Montclair, N. J .

Theodore W. Case, Auburn, N. Y. Mrs. Katherine B. Lewis, Buffalo, N. Y. Louis R. Cheney, Hartford, Conn.

Robert T. Lincoln, Washington^ D- C. John Claflin, Morristown, N. J .

W . A. Clark, Jr., Los Angeles. Calif.

Mary Beecher Longyear, Brookline, Mass.

Mrs. Pierre Lorillard, New York, N. Y. William A. Clark, Butte, Mont.

Clarence H. Mackay, New York, N. Y. Henry Clews, New York, N. Y. John Markle. New York, N. Y. James C. Colgate, New York, N. Y. Sylvester R. Marvin, Bryn Mawr, Pa. Romulus R. Colgate, New York, N. Y. Samuel Mather, Cleveland, Ohio Barron G. Collier, New York, N. Y. Jacob Dolson Cox, Cleveland, Ohio Cyrus H. McCormick, Chicago, III. R. T. Crane, Jr., Chicago, 1ll.

William Mitchell. New York, N. Y. Wm. Nelson Cromwell, New York N. Morris, New York. N. Y. William H. Crosby. Buffalo, N. Y. Frank A. Munsey, New York, N. Y. J. Barlow Cullum, Sewickley, Pa. S. L. Munson, Albany, N. Y. Allerton S. Cushman, Washington, D. C. Earl W. Oglebay. Cleveland, Ohio Chase S. Osbom, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

Charles Deering, Chicago, 1ll.

Watson B. Dickerman, New York John S. Palmer, 2nd, Providence, R. I. Edward L. Doheny, Los Angeles, Calif. iames A. Patten. Evanston, 1ll.

4rs. Elinor Medill Patterson, Washington, D. C. Josiah Dallas Dort, Flint, Mich.

Joseph Dowd, New York Samuel Young Ramage, Oil City, Pa. Geo. Elsworth Dunscombe, New York Fergus Reid, Norfolk, Va. Pierre S. duPont, Wilmington, Del. Manuel E. Rionda, New York. N. Y. William C. Durant, New York, N. Y. j. D. Rockefeller, Jr., New York, N. Y. Mrs. Thomas J. Emery, Cincinnati, Ohio John A. Roebling, Bernardsville, N.J. Mrs. Franklin Farrell, Ansonia, Conn. iulius Rosenwald, Chicago, 1ll.

4r. and Mrs. Edward L. Ryerson, Chicago, III. Frederick S. Fish, Bryn Mawr, Pa. Frederick C. Fletcher, Boston, Mass.

Henry Schniewind. New York, N. Y. Mrs. Theodore Schurmeier, London, England James B. Forgan, Chicago, 1ll.

Herbert H. Franklin, Syracuse, N. Y. Mrs. Ella F. Scott, Geneve, Switzerland Elbert H. Gary, New York, N. Y. Walter Scott, New York John Long Severance, Cleveland, Ohio Charles A. Gould, New York Elizabeth M. Sharpe, Philadelphia, Pa. Charles W. Gould. New York Mrs. R. W. Sears, Boston, Mass.

George J. Gould, New York, N. Y. C. A. Grasselli. Cleveland. Ohio Robert T. Sheldon, Oakland, N.J. Anderson Gratz, St. Louis, Mo. James Shewan, Brooklyn, N. Y. S. R. Guggenheim, New York, N. Y. J . G. Phelps Stokes, New York, N. Y. L. Gordon Hamersley. New York, N. Y. Charles Hamot Strong, Erie, Pa. H. M. Hanna, Jr., Cleveland, Ohio Frederick Sturges. Jr., New York Edward S. Harkness, New York, N. Y. Ambrose Swasey, Cleveland, Ohio Mrs. Stephen V. Harkness, New York, N. Y. Charles H. Swift. Chicago, 1ll.

Mrs. E. H. Harriman, New York, N. Y. Charles Phelps Taft, Cincinnati, Ohio Myron C. Taylor, New York, N. Y. Howard Heinz, Pittsburgh. Pa. Augustus Hemenway, Boston, Mass.

Alexander D. Thomson, Chicago, 1ll.

George Washington Hill, New York, N. Y. Alden A. Thorndike, Boston, Mass.

Mrs. Amos L. Hopkins, Williamstown, Mass.

Harry E. Verran, New York, N. Y. Clement S. Houghton, Boston, Mass.

H. M. Wallis, Racine, Wis. Charles H. Howland, Los Angeles, Cal. Artemas Ward, New York Archer M. Huntington, Baychester, N. Y. John I . Waterbury, New York Mrs. Edward Huntington, New York, N. Y. Windsor T. White, Cleveland, Ohio 37

THEVC^SHINGTON MANOR HOUSE William W. Whitman. Boston, Mass.

Dr. George C. F. Williams, Hartford, Conn.

Clarence M. Woolley, New York, N. Y. S. Zemurray, New Orleans, La. DECEASED Alexander Cochrane Mrs. Charles W. Dustin

Mrs. N. Hofheimer Ambrose Monell Oliver H. Payne William Rockefeller William Salomon John Austin Stevens Katrina Trask W. K. Vanderbilt

THE WOMEN'S COMMITTEE OF THE SULGRAVE INSTITUTION Mrs. Victoria Woodhull-Martin, Honorary Chairman Mrs. Samuel T. Gilford, Colonial Dames of America Mrs. Fenimore Cooper Goode Miss Amelia Day Campbell, National Chairman Miss Ethel Aimes, Claitnan oj Executive Con n ittct Miss Tommie Lou Gray Mrs. Eugene Griffin VICE-CHAIRMEN J . Amory Haskell, First Vice-President, Colonial Mrs. Frederick L. Eldridge, Colonial Dames of Mrs. Dames of America America Virginia Scott Hoyt Mrs. Hamilton R. Fairfax, President, Colonial Miss Miss Margaret A. Jackson, Secretary General, Dames State of New York, and Vice-President, Huguenot Society of America National Society of Colonial Dames of America Mrs. C. F.R.J enne, President, Daughters of 1812 Mrs. Eugene J. Grant, President General, National Mrs. Hamilton Fish Kean Society of New England Women Mrs. Samuel J .

Kramer, Regent, Washington Heights Mrs. Joseph R. Lamar, President, National Society, Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution Colonial Dames of America.

Mrs. Charles A. Latham, President General, Mrs. Henry P. Loomis Daughters of the Revolution Mrs. C. D. Lowrie Miss Ruth Lawrence, President Daughters of the Mrs. George Maynard Minor, President General, Cincinnati National Society Daughters of the American Miss Maud Aguilar Leland, Historian, Colonial Revolution Dames State of New York Mrs. Francois B. Moran, Founder of Albermarle and Miss Bertha Lowe Mt. Vernon Chapters Daughters of American Mrs. Russell W. Magna Revolution Frank Metcalf National Society New England Mrs. Henry Cole Quinby, The Mayflower Society of Mrs. Women New York Miss Kathryn Bayard Montgomery, Colonial Dames Mrs. Livingston Rowe Schuyler, President General, of America United Daughters of the Confederacy Mrs. Roy K. Moulton, Regent, Treaty of Ghent MEMBERS Chapter, National Society United States Daughters Mrs. Robert Allyn, Daughters of the British Empire of 1812 Mrs. Anson P. Atterbury, Colonial Lords of Manors Mrs. Robert Olyphant, Colonial Dames of America Mrs. Henry Fairfield Osborn, Colonial Dames State in America of New York Miss Hannah A. Babcock, Regent, Mary Murray Chapter Daughters of American Revolution Mrs. M . H. Macartney Pearson, Daughters of Founders and Patriots of America Mrs. Charles R. Banks, Recording Secretary, National Society United States Daughters of 1812 Mrs. L. J. Powers, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities Mrs. Henry Harper Benedict Miss Borrowe, Recording Secretary, Colonial Dames Mrs. Walter W. Price, Colonial Dames of America Miss Edith Day Robinson, Associate Editor, Town of America Miss Ethel Boyd Bowers, President, All-England and Country, Chairman of Publicity Committee Mrs. Louis Livingston Seaman, British War Relief Unit, Women s Overseas Service League of America Mrs. Charles S. Bryan Mrs. Juan Ceballos, The Southern Industrial Mrs. Bessie P. Sherwood Mrs. William Gerry Slade, President, National Educational Association Society of United States Daughters of 1812, State Mrs. Elihu Chauncey, Colonial Dames, State of of New York New York Mrs. T. M. Cheesman, President, Colonial Dames Mrs. Caleb Rochford Stetson, Mass. Society of Mayflower Descendants of America Mrs. Alfred W. Cochran, Regent, New York City, Mrs. John A. Stewart Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution Miss Elizabeth Stewart Mrs. Barron Collier Miss Gail Treat, Governor General, Order of the Descendants of Colonial Governors Mrs. Stuart Crockett Mrs. Ira Davenport, Colonial Dames of America Miss Gertrude Whiting, President, Needle and Bobbin Club Mrs. John W. Davis Mrs. Lewis L. Delafield, Colonial Dames of America Mrs. Charles S. Whitman, Vice-President, General Mrs. Haryot Holt Dey, President, Women's Press National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution Club Mrs. DeWitt Clinton Falls, Colonial Dames of Mrs. Robert Hall Wiles, National Society, Daughters of Founders and Patriots of America America Mrs. Murray Whiting Ferris, Ladies' Auxiliary of Mrs. John Francis Yawger, Recording SecretaryBritish Great War Veterans of America General, National Society, United States Daugh Mrs. William D. Gaillard ters of 181 2 38

THE WASHINGTON MANOR. HOUSE SUBSCRIPTION FORM THE SULGRAVE INSTITUTION (American Branch) 233 BROADWAY, NEW YORK U. S. A. Chancellor: Alton B. Parker To the Treasurer, L. Gordon Hamersley: I take pleasure in enclosing herewith check for $ assist in furthering the work of The Sulgrave Institution.

to

Signed Address Date Checks should be made out to The Sulgrave Institution

CLASSES OF MEMBERSHIP FOUNDER

$1,000.

FELLOW

75°-

HEREDITARY

500.

LIFE

250.

TWENTY YEARS

100.

TEN YEARS

50.

ANNUAL THE SULGRAVE INSTITUTION

5.

THE WASHINGTON MANOR HOUSE HOW TO REACH SULGRAVE DIRECTIONS FOR TOURISTS FROM LONDON

By Rail—Great Central Railroad, Marylebone Station, book to Helmdon. From Helmdon Sulgrave 2>4 miles by car or bus.

By Motor—Route No. i —London to Harrow, through Pinner, Rickmansworth, Amersham to Aylesbury and thence through Brackley to Sulgrave. About 60 miles in all through beautiful and historic country.

Route No. 2—London to Watford, to Tring, through Vale of Aylesbury to Brackley, thence to Sulgrave.

Route No. 3—London to St. Albans, Great North Road through Towcester to Sulgrave.

FROM PLYMOUTH

By Rail—London, Southwestern to Bristol, to Tewkesbury, to Bredon—for Bredon's Norton. To Bristol from Plymouth, thence to Oxford, to Banbury—car to Sulgrave.

By Motor—Plymouth to Exeter, to Bridgewater, to Bristol, to Gloucester, to Tewkes bury, then Bredon"s Norton. From Bredon's through Evesham to Chipping Campden, through Shipston on Stour, then to Banbury, thence to Sulgrave.

FROM SOUTHAMPTON

By Rail—Southampton to Banbury direct—car to Sulgrave.

By Motor—Southampton to Winchester, Andover and Newbury, through the Thames Valley to Wallingford, on to Oxford, to Brackley then Sulgrave.

FROM LIVERPOOL

By Rail—London and Northwestern Railroad (L. & N. W. R.) to Rugby, then to Banbury thence by car to Sulgrave.

By Motor—Liverpool to Chester, to Stafford, to Wolverhampton, through Coventry, to Rugby, to Banbury, to Sulgrave.

FROM SCOTLAND

By Rail—Midland Railway to Northampton, then to Banbury, car to Sulgrave.

By Motor—Newcastle, to Durham, to York, to Nottingham, to Leicester, Market I larborough, to Towcester then to Sulgrave.

HUGHES * BRETTELINEW YORK

LOCATION OF SULGRAVE ' I 'HE Mount Vernon of Great Britain is Sulgrave Manor, home of the direct ancestors -*. of George Washington, first president of the United States of America. This six teenth century manor house is in Sulgrave, an ancient village of Northernsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the very heart of Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;located in the southwestern part of Northamptonshire near the counties of Warwick, Oxford and Buckingham. The ancestors of four presidents of the United States dwelt in this section of England. Northants was also the place of ancestral origin of Warren G. Harding, twenty-ninth president of the United States. The home of the forbears of President John Adams and President John Quincy Adams was in the village of Flore. The Franklins, ancestors of Benjamin Franklin, lived in Ecton. The homes of John Harvard's ancestors and those of William Perm are near. The birth place of Shakespeare, Stratford-on-Avon, is a short distance across country from Sul grave, which is encircled by the towns of Northampton, Rugby, Bredon's Norton, Coventry, Kenilworth, Warwick, Banbury and Oxford, so rich in associations to both England and America.

841.05738aa8

||||||| b891.05738298a

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

||||