Doing so, it was natural that he should choose to
take refuge in a Britain beyond the ocean, where a brotherly welcome
among his kindred awaited the political prescript. It is probable,
however, that a special sympathy towards that region which, by its
former fidelity to the Stuarts, had earned from them the royal
quartering of its arms and the title of "The Ancient Dominion,"
directed his final choice. At any rate, it was to Virginia that he
came,--settling there, as a planter, first in the county of
Gloucester, and afterwards in that of King William. From one of his
descendants in a right line sprang (by intermarriage with a lady of
English family, the Winstons) William Winston Seaton, the editor,
whose mother connected him with a second Scotch family, the
Henrys,--the mother of Patrick Henry being a Winston. These last had
come, some three generations before, from the old seat of that family
in its knightly times, Winston Hall, in Yorkshire, and had settled in
the county of Hanover, where good estates gave them rank among the
gentry; while commanding stature, the gift of an equally remarkable
personal beauty, a very winning address, good parts, high character,
and the frequent possession among them of a fine natural eloquence,
gave them as a race an equal influence over the body of the people. In
William (popularly called Langaloo) and his sister Sarah, the mother
of Patrick Henry, these hereditary qualities seem to have been
particularly striking; so that, in their day, it seemed a sort of
received opinion that it was from the maternal side that the great
orator derived his extraordinary powers.
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