he
year 1759 and 1760, with Observations upon the state of the Colonies, by
the Rev. Andrew Burnaby, A.M., Vicar of Greenwich. Second edition.
London, 1775.

[512:D] The collectors.

[514:A] Old Churches of Va., i. 217.

[517:A] Letter of Rev. James Maury, in Memoirs of Huguenot Family, 421,
422.

[517:B] In Virginia to this day the preterite of "plead" is pronounced
"pled." Wirt actually prints the word "pled," and has raised a smile at
his expense. It is proper, however, to observe that "plead" and "read"
followed the same analogies even in England in the seventeenth century.
Many of the quaint words used by the common people, obsolete among the
well educated, and usually set down as illiterate mistakes, are really
grounded in traditional authority. Thus the word "gardein," for
guardian, is the old law term: and the verb "learn," still often used
actively, was, according to Trench, originally employed indifferently in
a transitive sense as well as intransitive. The common people are often
right without being able to prove it.

[517:C] Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry; Hawks, 124; Old Churches, etc., i.
219.

[518:A] Anderson's Hist. Col. Church, iii. 158.

CHAPTER LXVI.

PATRICK HENRY.

PATRICK HENRY, the second of nine children, was born on the 29th day of
May, 1736, at Studley, in Hanover County. The dwelling-house is no
longer standing; antique hedges of box and an avenue of aged trees
recall recollections of the past. Studley farm, devoid of any
picturesque scenery, is surrounded by woods; so that Henry was
actually,--

"The forest-born Demosthenes,
Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas."[519:A]

His parents were in moderate but easy circumstances. The father, John
Henry, was a native of Aberdeen, in Scotland; he was a cousin of David
Henry, who was a brother-in-law of Edward Cave, and co-editor with him
of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and his successor. Some say that John
Henry married Jane, sister of Dr. William Robertson, the historian, and
that in this way Patrick Henry and Lord Brougham came to be related.
John Henry, who emigrated to Virginia some time before 1730, enjoyed the
friendship and patronage of Governor Dinwiddie, who introduced him to
the acquaintance of Colonel John Syme, of Hanover, in whose family he
became domesticated, and with whose widow he intermarried. Her maiden
name was Sarah Winston, of a good old family. Colonel Byrd describes her
as "a portly, hand