IN THE YEAR 1613. 
15 
But, while the lives of individual men are of limited 
duration, the planting of new states is a slow and 
protracted process, of which the germ and the fruit are 
seldom found in the same generation. The municipal 
officers of London who began the work, who enlisted 
the participation of noblemen and courtiers, who cre¬ 
ated the spirit of enterprise, and set the example of 
broad and liberal designs, bequeathed to successors in 
similar mercantile positions their habits of adventure 
and the fulfilment of their lordly schemes. The men 
of rank who aspired to be proprietors of domains that 
among the foremost in maintaining the liberties of the subject against the usurpations 
of the throne. He succeeded Sir Julius Caesar as Master of the Rolls in 1636; and died 
March 18, 1638. He purchased the Manor and Castle of Chilham in Kent; where, 
about the year 1616, he erected a magnificent edifice for his residence. It is said of him, 
that “his understanding few could equal; his virtues, fewer would:" and that “the 
wisest men reckoned his death among the public calamities of those times” ( Athence 
Oxonienses , vol. ii. cols. 634 and 635; Hasted's Kent , vol. iii. p. 130; Chalmers' Biog. 
Diet ., &c ). Some of his speeches are preserved by Rushworth. His son Dudley was 
also distinguished as a general scholar and writer. Sir Dudley left eight sons and three 
daughters. Col. Edward Digges, chosen Governor of Virginia in 1655, “ having given 
signal testimony of his fidelity to Virginia and to the Commonwealth of England ” 
(Henning , vol. i. p. 388), was probably his son. In the churchyard at Woodford, Eng¬ 
land, is the tomb of “ Edward Digges, Esq., son of Hon. Dudley Digges of Virginia, 
1711” ( Lyson's Env. of Bond ., vol. iiii. p. 278). 
Sir John Wolstenholme, as well as Sir Thomas Smith, held the important and 
lucrative office of Farmer of the Customs, and was made a knight by Charles I. 
He purchased Nostell Abbey in Yorkshire; and, at his death, left a great estate. 
The parish-church of Stanmore Magna, near London, was erected at his sole expense; 
and his monument, which presents his effigies at full length, was placed within it. 
He died Nov. 25, 1639, at the age of seventy-seven. In his epitaph, his office of 
Farmer of the Customs is referred to: “ Quam splendidissimam teloniam, summa fide, 
cura, et innocentia, exercuit.” His son, Sir John, who was made a baronet by 
Chai’les II., and appointed to his father’s place in the Customs, lost a large part of his 
property in the Revolution by adhering to the king. There was a remarkable friend¬ 
ship between him and the Earl of Clarendon, the Lord Chancellor ( Lyson's Env. of 
London , vol. iii. pp. 395, 396; Kimber's Baronetage, vol. ii. p. 306). The friendship 
between this Sir John and Clarendon must have begun early; as we find in the auto¬ 
biography of Sir John Bramston (Camden Society’s publications, 1845) a reference to 
Edward Hyde as on the way to see his wife, then at Sir John Wolstenholme’s, who 
lived at Nostell Priory, near Ferry Bridge. This was about 1640. 
