Not only was Marlborough foredoomed by external decrees and adverse official decisions, but much of its failure was rooted in the local elements by which it was constituted. The great majority of lot holders were the "gentlemen" who were so carefully distinguished from "all other of the Inhabitants" in the order to survey the town in 1691. Most were leading personages in Stafford, and we may assume that their purchases of lots were made in the interests of investment gains, not in establishing homes or businesses. Only three or four yeomen and ordinary keepers seem to have settled in the town. Sampson Darrell, for example, held two lots, but he lived at Aquia Creek.[34] Francis Hammersley was a planter who married Giles Brent's widow and lived at "The Retirement," one of the Brent estates.[35] George Brent, nephew of the original Giles Brent, was law partner of William Fitzhugh, and had been appointed Receiver General of the Northern Neck in 1690. His brother Robert also was a lot holder. Both lived at Woodstock, and presumably they did not maintain residences at the port town.[36] Other leading citizens were Robert Alexander, Samuel Hayward, and Martin Scarlett, but again there is little likelihood that they were ever residents of the town. John Waugh, the uproarious pastor of Potomac Parish, also was a lot holder, but he lived on the south side of Potomac Creek in a house which belonged to Mrs. Anne Meese of London. His failure to pay for that house after 11 years' occupancy of it, which led to a suit in which Fitzhugh was the prosecutor, does not suggest that he ever arrived at building a house in the port town.[37] Captain George Mason was a distinguished individual who lived at "Accokeek," about a mile and a half from Marlborough. He certainly built in the town, for in 1691 he petitioned for a license to "keep an ordinary at the Town or Port for this county." The petition was granted on condition that he "find a good and Sufficient maintenance and reception both for man and horse." Captain Mason was grandfather of George Mason of Gunston Hall, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, and was, at one time or another, sheriff, lieutenant colonel and commander in chief of the Stafford Rangers, and a burgess. He participated in putting down the uprising of Nanticoke Indians in 1692, bringing in captives for trial at the unfinished courthouse in March of that year.[38] Despite his interest in the town, however, it is unlikely that he ever lived there.