Page:Bruton parish church restored and its historic environments (1907 V2).djvu/190

 behold to-day. It was he who largely prevailed upon the government to appropriate a sufficient sum of money to build this part of the Church and to put in pews for the Governor, his council, and the members of the House of Burgesses, making Bruton the "Court Church of Colonial Virginia;" and it was he who, when he found that the contractor was disposed to take an unfair advantage of the Church, offered to furnish all the bricks needed for the building at fifteen shillings per thousand. In his spirit of devotion to the Church we find our vindication for this memorial, and with this knowledge we place upon the canopy over the pew where the Governors sat the name, as it was in the olden days, of "Alexander Spotswood;" Governor and Churchman.

Beneath this canopy a chair has been placed in memory of the Honorable Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt. Many Governors, Spotswood, Drysdale, Gooch, Dinwiddie, Fauquier, Botetourt, and Lord Dunmore sat with their Councils in this canopied pew, but the finest Englishman of them all, the most zealous patron of education, the most devoted American, the most devout Churchman, and the one most beloved was Lord Botetourt. It was he who when about to answer to the last earthly summons of the King of Kings, sent for Hon. Robert Carter Nicholas, who had remarked that he could not understand how His Excellency could ever resign himself to death, and said, "Mr. Nicholas, I have sent for you that you may see that I am willing to resign the good things of earth with the same equanimity with which I have enjoyed them." He loved Virginia, and chose to be buried in her soil, and was followed from the Church by a great concourse of mourners to his last resting place beneath the Chancel of the Chapel of the College of William and Mary.

Here in these memorial pews in the transepts worshipped for many years the representatives of the people of Virginia in the House of Burgesses. To have named them all would have covered every inch of the woodwork with tablet of bronze.