The Mother of Washington and Her Times. Sara Agnes Rice Pryor
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"History of the Ball family of Barkham, Comitatis Berks, taken from the Visitation Booke of London marked O. 24, in the College of Arms," we find that "William Ball, Lord of the Manor of Barkham, Com. Berks, died in the year 1480." From this William Ball, George Washington was eighth in direct descent.
The entry in the old visitation book sounds imposing, but Barkham was probably a small town nestled amid the green hills of Berkshire, whose beauty possibly so reminded the Conqueror of his Normandy that "he stayed his ruthless hand." A century ago it was a village of some fifty houses attached to the estate of the Levison Gowers.
There is no reason to suppose that the intervening Balls in the line—Robert, William, two Johns—all of whom lived in Barkham, or the William of Lincoln's Inn, who became "attorney in the Office of Pleas in the Exchequer," were men of wealth or rank. The "getting of gear was never," said one of their descendants, "a family trait, nor even the ability to hold it when gotten"; but nowhere is it recorded that they ever wronged man or woman in the getting. They won their worldly goods honorably, used them beneficently, and laid them down cheerfully when duty to king or country demanded the sacrifice, and when it pleased God to call them out of the world. They were simply men "doing their duty in their day and generation and deserving well of their fellows."
They belonged to the Landed Gentry of England. This does not presuppose their estates to have been extensive. A few starved acres of land sufficed to class them among the Landed Gentry, distinguishing them from laborers. As such they may have been entitled to the distinction of "Gentleman," the title in England next lowest to "Yeoman." No one of them had ever bowed his shoulders to the royal accolade, nor held even the position of esquire to a baronet. But the title "Gentleman" was a social distinction of value. "Ordinarily the King," says Sir Thomas Smith, "doth only make Knights and create Barons or higher degrees; as for gentlemen, they be made good cheap in this Kingdom; for whosoever studieth the laws of the realm, who studieth in the universities, who professeth the liberal sciences, he shall be taken for a gentleman; for gentlemen be those whom their blood and race doth make noble and known." By "a gentleman born" was usually understood the son of a gentleman by birth, and grandson of a gentleman by position. "It takes three generations to make a gentleman," we say to-day, and this seems to have been an ancient rule in England.
The Balls might well be proud to belong to old England's middle classes—her landed, untitled Gentry. A few great minds—Lord Francis Verulam, for instance—came from her nobility; and some gifted writers—the inspired dreamer, for instance—from her tinkers and tradesmen; but the mighty host of her scholars, poets, and philosophers belonged to her middle classes. They sent from their ranks Shakespeare and Milton, Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, Gibbon, Dryden, "old Sam Johnson," Pope, Macaulay, Stuart Mill, Huxley, Darwin, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burke, Disraeli, Cowper, Sir William Blackstone, and nearly all of the Chief Justices of England. These are but a few of the great names that shine along the ranks of England's middle classes.
Many of these men were called to the foot of the throne by a grateful sovereign to receive some distinction—so paltry by comparison with glory of their own earning—and among them came one day an ancestor of the mother of George Washington. Who he was we know not, nor yet what had been his service to his country; but he was deemed worthy to bear upon his shield a lion rampant, the most honorable emblem of heraldry, and the lion's paws held aloft a ball! This much we know of him—that in addition to his valor and fidelity he possessed a poet's soul. He chose for the motto, the cri de guerre of his clan, a suggestive phrase from these lines of Ovid:—
"He gave to man a noble countenance and commanded him to gaze upon the heavens, and to carry his looks upward to the stars."
WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE.
CHAPTER III
THE BALL FAMILY IN VIRGINIA
The first of the family of Ball to come to Virginia was William Ball, who settled in Lancaster County in 1650. He was the son of the attorney of Lincoln's Inn. He emigrated, with other cavaliers because of the overthrow of the royal house and the persecution of its adherents.
Before this time one John Washington, an Englishman and a loyalist, had settled in Westmoreland. He became a man of influence in the colony, rising rapidly from major to colonel, justice of Westmoreland, and member of the House of Burgesses; accepting positions under the Commonwealth, as did others of King Charles's adherents; doing their duty under the present conditions, and consoling themselves by calling everything—towns, counties, rivers, and their own sons—after the "Martyred Monarch"; and in rearing mulberry trees and silkworms to spin the coronation robe of purple for the surely coming time of the Restoration.
John Washington married three times—two Annes and one Frances—and, innocently unconscious of the tremendous importance to future historians of his every action, he neglected to place on record the date of these events. In his day a woman appeared before the public only three times—at her baptism, marriage, and death. But one of Colonel Washington's wives emerges bravely from obscurity. A bold sinner and hard swearer, having been arraigned before her husband, she was minded to improve her opportunity; and the Westmoreland record hath it that "Madam Washington said to ye prisoner, 'if you were advised by yr wife, you need not acome to this passe,' and he answered, having the courage of his convictions, '———— my wife! If it were to doe, I would do it againe.'"
And so no more of Madam Washington! This trouble had grown out of what was characterized as "ye horrid, traiterous, and rebellious practices" of a young Englishman on the James River, whose only fault lay in the unfortunate circumstance of his having been born a hundred years too soon. Bacon's cause had been just, and he was eloquent enough and young and handsome enough to draw all men's hearts to himself, but his own was stilled in death before he could right his neighbors' wrongs.
And now, the Fates that move the pieces on the chess-board of life ordained that two prophetic names should appear together to suppress the first rebellion against the English government. When the Grand Assembly cast about for loyal men and true to lay "a Levy in ye Northern Necke for ye charges in Raisinge ye forces thereof for suppressing ye late Rebellion," the lot fell on "Coll. John Washington and Coll: Wm. Ball," the latter journeying up from his home in Lancaster to meet Colonel Washington at Mr. Beale's, in Westmoreland.
Colonel Ball's Lancaster home was near the old White Chapel church, around which are clustered a large number of strong, heavy tombstones which betoken to-day "a deep regard of the living for the dead."
Almost all of them are inscribed with the name of Ball. In their old vestry books are stern records. A man was fined five thousand pounds of tobacco for profane swearing; unlucky John Clinton, for some unmentioned misdemeanor, was required four times to appear on bended knees and four times to ask pardon. As late as 1727 men were presented for drunkenness, for being absent one month from church, for swearing, for selling crawfish and posting accounts on Sunday. "And in addition to above," adds Bishop Meade, "the family of Ball was very active in promoting good things," as well as zealous in the punishment of evil. Overt acts—swearing, fishing on Sunday, absence from church—could easily be detected and punished. But how about drunkenness? There are degrees of intoxication. At what point was it punishable?
An old Book of Instructions settled the matter. "Where ye same legges which carry a Man into a house cannot bring him out againe, it is Sufficient Sign of Drunkennesse."
The descendants of William Ball held good positions in the social life of the colony. Their names appear in Bishop Meade's list of vestrymen, as founders and patrons of the Indian schools, and fourteen times in the House of Burgesses. They intermarried