MARY WASHINGTON'S ENGLISH ANCESTRY
The family of Ball from which Mary, the mother of Washington,
descended, can be traced in direct line only as far back as the year
1480. They came originally from "Barkham, anciently 'Boercham';
noted as the spot at which William the Conqueror paused on his
devastating march from the bloody field of Hastings:[1] 'wasting ye
land, burning ye towns and sleaing (_sic_) ye people till he came to
Boerchum where he stayed his ruthless hand.'"
[1] _The Maternal Ancestry of Washington_, by George Washington
Ball.
In the "History of the Ball family of Barkham, Comitatis Berks,
taken from the Visitation Booke of London marked O. 24, in the
College of Arms," we find that "William Ball, Lord of the Manor of
Barkham, Com. Berks, died in the year 1480." From this William Ball,
George Washington was _eighth_ in direct descent.
The entry in the old visitation book sounds imposing, but Barkham
was probably a small town nestled amid the green hills of Berkshire,
whose beauty possibly so reminded the Conqueror of his Normandy
that "he stayed his ruthless hand." A century ago it was a village
of some fifty houses attached to the estate of the Levison Gowers.
There is no reason to suppose that the intervening Balls in the
line,--Robert, William, two Johns,--all of whom lived in Barkham, or
the William of Lincoln's Inn, who became "attorney in the Office of
Pleas in the Exchequer," were men of wealth or rank. The "getting of
gear was never," said one of their descendants, "a family trait, nor
even the ability to hold it when gotten"; but nowhere is it recorded
that they ever wronged man or woman in the getting. They won their
worldly goods honorably, used them beneficently, and laid them down
cheerfully when duty to king or country demanded the sacrifice, and
when it pleased God to call them out of the world. They were simply
men "doing their duty in their day and generation and deserving well
of their fellows."
They belonged to the Landed Gentry of England. This does not
presuppose their estates to have been extensive. A few starved
acres of land sufficed to class them among the Landed Gentry,
distinguishing them from laborers. As such they may have been
entitled to the distinction of "Gentleman," the title in England
next lowest to "Yeoman." No one of them had ever bowed his shoulders
to the royal accolade, nor held even the position of esquire to a
baronet. But the title "Gentleman" was a social distinction of
value. "Ordinarily the King," says Sir Thomas Smith, "doth only make
Knights and create Barons or higher degrees; as for _gentlemen_,
they be made good cheap in this Kingdom; for whosoever studieth the
laws of the realm, who studieth in the universities, who professeth
the liberal sciences, he shall be taken for a gentleman; for
gentlemen be those whom their blood and race doth make noble and
known." By "a gentleman born" was usually understood the son of a
gentleman by birth, and grandson of a gentleman by position. "It
takes three generations to make a gentleman," we say to-day, and
this seems to have been an ancient rule in England.
The Balls might well be proud to belong to old England's middle
classes--her landed, untitled Gentry. A few great minds--Lord
Francis Verulam, for instance--came from her nobility; and some
gifted writers--the inspired dreamer, for instance--from her tinkers
and tradesmen; but the mighty host of her scholars, poets, and
philosophers belonged to her middle classes. They sent from their
ranks Shakespeare and Milton, Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, Gibbon,
Dryden, "old Sam Johnson," Pope, Macaulay, Stuart Mill, Huxley,
Darwin, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burke, Disraeli, Cowper, Sir William
Blackstone, and nearly all of the Chief Justices of England. These
are but a few of the great names that shine along the ranks of
England's middle classes.
Many of these men were called to the foot of the throne by a
grateful sovereign to receive some distinction,--so paltry by
comparison with glory of their own earning,--and among them came
one day an ancestor of the mother of George Washington. Who he was
we know not, nor yet what had been his service to his country; but
he was deemed worthy to bear upon his shield a lion rampant, the
most honorable emblem of heraldry, and the lion's paws held aloft a
ball! This much we know of him,--that in addition to his valor and
fidelity he possessed a poet's soul. He chose for the motto, the
_cri de guerre_ of his clan, a suggestive phrase from these lines of
Ovid:--
"He gave to man a noble countenance and commanded him to gaze upon
the heavens, and to carry his looks upward to the stars."
[Illustration: WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE.]