As naval officer of the Potomac, Thomas had to prevent smuggling. A year before Matholic was burned his life was threatened by the crew of the _Elizabeth_. No doubt some of his enemies made in the line of his duties were at the bottom of this outrage. At any rate the Lords of Trade in London thought so, for they sent him a bounty, three hundred pounds of which was from the privy purse of Queen Caroline. Tradition says that this bounty helped Thomas Lee to finish building his home, Stratford. In the meantime he built another house on the Matholic estate at a spot removed from the original house. The new house was called Mt. Pleasant. The site of the destroyed house was ever after known as Burnt House Field. It was used as a family burying ground. _STRATFORD HALL_ Long before Matholic burned Thomas Lee had started building his own home. As a land agent for the Northern Neck proprietary he was well acquainted with its desirable lands, but the portion which he selected for his own belonged to the Pope family, and had been patented by Colonel Nathaniel Pope about 1650, before the proprietary came into being. "I want to buy the Clifts," said Thomas Lee. This land was situated in Westmoreland County and bordered on the Potomac. Here the banks rose sharply above the River. We can imagine Thomas Lee standing at the edge of those bold cliffs, looking across the River while he dreamed of the manor house which he would some day build. One day in 1716 a representative of the Pope family closed the deal by ceremoniously presenting Thomas Lee with a handful of earth and a twig--an ancient symbolic confirmation of the transference of the 1,450 acres of land called "the Clifts Plantation." Thomas Lee built his home nearly a mile inland from the "clifts," where it would not be so open to an enemy attack from the River. Pirates were still roving the surrounding waters. It took a long time to build the kind of house that Thomas Lee had in mind--a house with walls of brick two feet thick, that would stand for centuries. The thousands of bricks required for this undertaking had to be made there on the place. Thomas Lee made a trip to England at the beginning of his project, some traditions say, and while he was there he doubtless visited the estate at Strat-by-the-Ford, once owned by his grandfather, Richard Lee, the immigrant. There could scarcely be any other reason why he would name his own home, Stratford. Thomas Lee planned his house, it is said, after viewing the manor houses of England, and the result was that Stratford turned out to be a sort of medieval fortress. It was shaped like the letter H with pointed roofs. The crossbar of the H was the Great Hall, about thirty feet square.