The peculiar conditions of early times invest our greatest leaders with additional interest and make the fact of their greatness stand out all the more clearly. Schools were few and travel much restricted. Only about thirty families had good libraries. To the women of that day has been ascribed the honor of training the great men of the nation. George Washington was only eleven years old when his father died. His mother daily taught him from a manual of maxims which he preserved and often consulted in after life. A French general, after a visit to Mary Washington, said, “No wonder America produces such great men when they have such mothers.” Thomas Jefferson’s father died when he was fourteen. His mother was said to have been unusually refined and intellectual, evincing much literary taste in the art of letter-writing. This was the only field open to a woman with literary proclivities at that time. It was from her he inherited his intellect, and in the training of her boy all that was best and noblest in her was brought to bear upon the formation of his character. These two mothers of great men are not exceptions. History records the names of many noble women who have devoted their lives to their children, not only in Virginia, but elsewhere. Virginians admired the king and the nobility but liked their own rights better. They loved the pride and pomp of aristocracy, but this was only a matter of taste. When it came to losing a freeman’s right they relegated their aristocratic tastes to the background. They loved the solemn ritual of the church. Governor Spottswood describes the Virginians of his time as “living in gentlemanly conformity with the Church of England,” and the famous old chapel, built in 1632, now familiarly called Old Bruton Church, is consecrated by many hallowed associations. Here worshiped the dauntless Spottswood, himself, as well as Lord de Botetourt, Lord Dunmore and many others in a pew elevated from the main floor and richly canopied. And here worshiped many men whose names are indissolubly bound up with the conception of this grand commonwealth. The churchyard is the place of sepulture of some of Virginia’s most distinguished men. [Illustration: WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE] Nearly all the great Virginians were descended from the Cavaliers. Washington was the great-grandson of one of them, and Madison, Monroe, the Randolphs, Richard Henry Lee, and others were also descendants of royalists. Virginia succeeded in keeping out the importation of felons. A number of redemptioners, or political prisoners, who were sold by the English government to speculators, were traded in the colonies, but misfortune being their only crime, they became in most cases useful citizens.