THE REALITY OF ANGLO-AMERICANISM.
[To TER EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—In connection with the correspondence on this subject in your columns, will you allow me to point out as briefly as possible the exact relationship between the Dartmouth family and the American Washingtons? Elizabeth Washington, who married William Legge and became the mother of 'George, first Lord Dartmouth, was the daughter of Sir William Washington, of Packington in the county of Leicester. John Washington, who emigrated to Virginia in 1657 and became the great-grandfather of the first President, was her first -cousin, being the son of Sir William's younger brother, the Rev. Lawrence Washington, Fellow of Brasenose and Rector of Purleigh. Sir William and the Rev. Lawrence Washington were members of the Washington family, of Sulgrave and Brington in the county of Northampton, and great-grandsons -of Lawrence Washington (Mayor of Northampton), to whom the manor of Sulgrave was granted on the dissolution of the monasteries. The brass effigy of this original Lawrence Washington (the grantee), who died in February, 1584, is still to be seen on the slab over his grave in Sulgrave Church, sur- mounted by the Washington arms. A portion of the house which he built in the village is still in good preservation, and there again—on the spandrils of the arch over its main entrance—there can be distinctly traced the bars and mullets, the stars and stripes, of his family arms. Declining fortunes appear to have forced the Washingtons to dispose of Sulgrave in 1610, and to migrate to Brington.
It is from this family, whose sixteenth and seventeenth -century memorials survive in these two Northamptonshire Tillages, that both the Dartmouth family and the American Washingtons are descended. The connection of the Dart- mouth family with the Washingtons of Sulgrave has always been clearly established. The connection of the American with the Northamptonshire Washingtons, however, was for years a matter of conjecture and controversy, owing to the uncertainty which so long surrounded the English antece- -dents of the first emigrant, John Washington (great-grand- father of the President); but their direct descent from the -Sulgrave Washingtons has been finally established within the last decade by the researches of Mr. Waters and by the curious ,discovery made by Mr. Worthington Ford, to which I ven- tured to call attention in the Times of August 29th and September 24th, 1894.
How far the Stara and Stripes of the American flag owe their origin to the bars and mullets of the Washington arms "s—as your correspondent "B." says—a matter of dispute ;
but, as he points oat, the form of the arms contains an un- doubted " suggestion" of the form of the flag.—I am, Sir, &a., Journal Office, House of Commons. WILLIAM GREY.
Previous page
