Sender: Richard Henry Lee, Subscription for Portrait of Lord Camden Recipient:
[20 June 1766]
We who subscribe this paper highly venerating the character of the right honorable Charles Pratt Lord Camden Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in Great Britain for his virtuous attachment to the cause of justice and public liberty and being particularly affected with gratitude for the noble and disinterested firmness with which this great Man supported America s just rights in the house of Lords against the Act for imposing Stamp duties here and from the wish we entertain that all future Judges may be induced from a contemplation of this worthy Judges picture to recollect those virtues the possession of which procures Lord Camden the love of his Country Do oblige ourselves to pay on demand into the hands of Richard Henry Lee esquire one of our representatives in General Assembly the sum of money by each of us subscribed in order that the said Lee may be enabled to employ the most excellent Portrait Painter of Great Britain to take a picture of Lord Camden to be placed in the most conspicuous part of the Court house of Westmoreland County. And we the Subscribers do also desire that the said Lee may by letter present the thanks of the Subscribers to his Lordship for his protection of their just rights and to entreat that his Lordship will be pleased to permit his picture to be taken for the purposes aforesaid Given under our hands in Westmoreland Country Virginia this 20th day of June 1766.
Ninety six pounds ten shillings currency at 25 pr. Cent the exchange at which the business was negotiated is Sterling £77.4. Now it appears by my letter to Mr. Jenings June 1st. 1767 that the sum remitted him was only £76.8 which is 8/16 sterling short of the subscription money, the reason of which is this: When the subscribed money came to be remitted all the Subscribers had not paid and some of them never did pay, but desiring not to stop the business for a trifle, I remitted Mr.Jenings a bill drawn by Capt. Johnstoun on James Russell for £52. sterling and my own bill on the same Gentleman for £24.8 sterling making in the whole £76.8 Sterling which Mr. Jenings received and has since Septr. 1772 paid to Mr. William Lee in London by my [ ]
Lee PapersVirginia Historical Society
Printed in James Curtis Ballagh, The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, Volume 1, 1762 - 1778, pp. 22 - 23.
Lee on 1 June 1767 wrote to Lord Camden to inform him that a group of Westmoreland County citizens had sponsored his portrait.