ratford, he owned
plantations called "Mocke Neck," "Mathotick," "Paper-Maker's Neck,"
"War Captain's Neck," "Bishop's Neck," and "Paradise," with four
thousand acres besides, on the Potomac, lands in Maryland, three
islands in Chesapeake Bay, an interest in several trading-vessels, and
innumerable indented and other servants. He became a member of the
King's Council, and lived in great elegance and comfort. That he was a
man of high character, and of notable piety for an age of free living
and worldly tendencies, his will shows. In that document he bequeaths
his soul "to that good and gracious God that gave it me, and to my
blessed Redeemer, Jesus Christ, assuredly trusting, in and by His
meritorious death and passion, to receive salvation."

The attention of the reader has been particularly called to the
character and career of Richard Lee, not only because he was the
founder of the family in Virginia, but because the traits of the
individual reappear very prominently in the great soldier whose life
is the subject of this volume. The coolness, courage, energy,
and aptitude for great affairs, which marked Richard Lee in the
seventeenth century, were unmistakably present in the character of
Robert E. Lee in the nineteenth century.

We shall conclude our notice of the family by calling attention to
that great group of celebrated men who illustrated the name in the
days of the Revolution, and exhibited the family characteristics as
clearly. These were Richard Henry Lee, of Chantilly, the famous orator
and statesman, who moved in the American Congress the Declaration of
Independence; Francis Lightfoot Lee, a scholar of elegant attainments
and high literary accomplishments, who signed, with his more renowned
brother, the Declaration; William Lee, who became Sheriff of London,
and ably seconded the cause of the colonies; and Arthur Lee,
diplomatist and representative of America abroad, where he displayed,
as his diplomatic correspondence indicates, untiring energy and
devotion to the interests of the colonies. The last of these brothers
was Philip Ludwell Lee, whose daughter Matilda married her second
cousin, General Henry Lee. This gentleman, afterward famous as
"Light-Horse Harry" Lee, married a second time, and from this union
sprung the subject of this memoir.

III.

GENERAL "LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" LEE.

This celebrated soldier, who so largely occupied the public eye in the
Revolution, is worthy of notice, both