because I am,

Your obliged friend and servant,

W. M. THACKERAY.

LONDON, October 18, 1852.




PREFACE.

THE ESMONDS OF VIRGINIA.


The estate of Castlewood, in Virginia, which was given to our ancestors
by King Charles the First, as some return for the sacrifices made in
his Majesty's cause by the Esmond family, lies in Westmoreland county,
between the rivers Potomac and Rappahannock, and was once as great as
an English Principality, though in the early times its revenues were
but small. Indeed, for near eighty years after our forefathers possessed
them, our plantations were in the hands of factors, who enriched
themselves one after another, though a few scores of hogsheads of
tobacco were all the produce that, for long after the Restoration, our
family received from their Virginian estates.

My dear and honored father, Colonel Henry Esmond, whose history, written
by himself, is contained in the accompanying volume, came to Virginia
in the year 1718, built his house of Castlewood, and here permanently