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by the Lees of Cheshire, Oxfordshire, Bucks, and Essex, as well as of Shropshire, and much was said and written pro and con both before and after his death.
In recent years his genealogy has been very persistently and thoroughly investigated by those learned in antiquarian research, and their conclusion is in favor of Shropshire, though in 1663 the first emigrant, Colonel Richard Lee, made a will in which he states that he was “lately of Stafford Langton in the county of Essex.”
Now, as we have every reason to believe that he was a younger son, the parental nest was probably full; neither was it such a “far cry” from Shropshire to the near vicinity of London, a remove preparatory, possibly, to the still greater one across the Atlantic.
He certainly used the arms of the Shropshire Lees.
Colonel Lee's devotion to the House of Stuart was notorious, and had been often proved even by the manner of dating his will — viz., “The 6th of February, in the sixteenth year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord, Charles II, King of Great Britain, etc., and in the year of our Lord 1663.”
1 Being Secretary of State and Member of the Privy Council in Virginia, he had assisted that stanch royalist, Governor Berkeley,in holding the colony to its allegiance, so that after the death of Charles I, Cromwell was forced to send troops and armed vessels of war to reduce it to subjection.
Unable to resist, they made a treaty with the “Commonwealth of England,” wherein Virginia was described as an “Independent Dominion,” this treaty being ratified in the same manner as with a foreign power.
Berkeley was then removed and another governor appointed; but the undaunted Colonel Richard Lee hired a Dutch vessel, freighted it himself, went to Brussels or Breda, surrendered up Sir William Berkeley's old commission — for the government of that province-and received a new one from his present Majesty, Charles II, “a loyal action and deserving my commendation.”
2 It
1 The “Restoration,” as is well known, only occurred in 1660, so that the Virginian's loyalty utterly ignored the long years of exile, and recognized Charles II as King from the moment of his father's execution.
2 Introductis ad Latinum Blasoniam. By John Gibbons, Blue Man-tel, London, 1682.
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