Page:Bruton parish church restored and its historic environments (1907 V2).djvu/189

 name and fame to the care of the historians far removed from sympathetic touch with her life and institutions.

We can, therefore, reproach ourselves alone for the fact that the historians whose message has reached the public ear have been largely the men who have sought to trace the source of the nation's godliness and piety back to Plymouth Rock, regarding the Virginia settlers and their descendants as a gay and careless set of wild adventurers whose minds were set upon material gain, and whose hearts were pleasure bent; or, else the story of her past has been told by those who had a mortal grudge against the Church, and who perverted the truth of history to make it conform to the low requirements of a special brief.

In lasting bronze we have placed here in the Church of God names eloquent with suggestion. From the tower door to where the nave intersects the transepts the names are, with but two exceptions, those of men who served on the parish vestry during Colonial days, and who, almost without exception, served the state in some distinguished capacity.

The truth conveyed through the memorials in the transepts is of a deeper and wider interest. They tell of the faith and devotion of the Nation-builders. The velvet canopy bearing the royal arms of England and embroidered in letters of gold with the name "Alexander Spotswood," is a restoration and a memorial to the gallant knight of "the golden horse shoe." He was a cavalier, and was ever eager for adventure, but he was a churchman, and loved the Church with a zeal and devotion which hallows his name and gives it a rightful place where we see it to-day. It was he who, when the seat of government was moved from Jamestown in 1699 and established here, proposed, in 1710. that a new Church should be built, and suggested that the Parish build the two ends and that "the government would take care for the wings and the intervening part." It was he who furnished the parish with the plan of the Church, and gave to its outline forms the grace and strength and beauty which our architect has restored, and which, after the lapse of years, we