- rence had the family liking for enterprises
and martial employment. I was eight years old, and he of age, when Lawrence served with Admiral Vernon and General Wentworth in the disastrous attack on Cartagena. I remember as a boy the interest this expedition caused in our neighbourhood. It was said that Harry Beverley and other Virginians captured by the Spaniards had been made to work as slaves, and this stirred up much feeling among us. The ex-Governor Spottiswood, although an aged man, would have gone as a major-general, but died suddenly at Temple Farm, near Yorktown, where forty-two years later Lord Cornwallis met me to sign the capitulations.
Lawrence was away two years. The letters wrote by him to my father were full of interest, and, as I remember, were the means of arousing in me, who was but a little lad, the liking for warfare, of which we all had a share.
I can remember how, as we sat about the hearth at evening, my father read aloud to us these letters, and explained to me the military terms used, and why, for want of foresight, the gallantry of soldiers and sail-
