[Illustration: WASHINGTON BRASS, SULGRAVE CHURCH.] It is not the purpose of this book of random wanderings to deal much with sober history, but the story of Sulgrave's connection with the Washingtons is not common and a short sketch may not be amiss. In the reign of Henry VIII., Laurence Washington was Mayor of Northampton and a gentleman of consequence. Sulgrave was among the confiscated church lands that the King was offering at bargain prices, and Washington purchased it for three hundred pounds. A tradition that these alienated church lands would bring evil fortune to the owner does not seem to have deterred him, though when his grandson, another Laurence Washington, was forced by adverse circumstances to sell the estate, the old superstition might seem to have been verified. This grandson, with a large family, removed about 1606--the exact date is doubtful--to Little Brington, some ten miles to the northeast of Sulgrave, where he was given a house, it is thought, by the Earl of Spencer, to which noble family the Washingtons were related by marriage. The Laurence Washington who is buried in Great Brington Church was the great-great-grandfather of the "first American." Later in our wanderings we visited the Bringtons, which lie only a short distance from Northampton and may be reached by excellent roads running through some of the most beautiful Midland country. We paused in the midst of a heavy shower near the village cross under the gigantic elm that stands in front of Great Brington Church, to which we gained admission with but little delay. The Brington villages are on the estate of the Spencers, one of the wealthiest and most ancient families of the English nobility, and the church is an imposing one, kept in perfect repair. The chief Washington memorials are the brasses--the inscription and coat-of-arms--over the grave of Laurence Washington of Sulgrave and Brington, and these have been sunk deep in the stone slab and are guarded by lock and key. In the chapel are some of the most elaborate memorials we saw--altar tombs bearing the sculptured effigies and ancient arms and armor of the Spencers; and yet how all this splendid state, all the wealth of carving, arms and effigies, shrink into insignificance beside the august name on the plain slab in the aisle, and how all the trappings of heraldry and the chronicles of all the line of Spencers fade into nothingness over against that tiny sunken tablet with its stars and bars!