refuse payment of the arbitrary tax of tonnage and poundage. He was one of the three hundred members who signed the protestation to support the churoh of England and the liberty of parliament; and was appointed one of the members of the council during the recess. His name stood at the head of the list of subscribers for raising money against the rebels in Ireland; for which purpose he bestowed the sum of 1200l. The son of this Samuel Vassall afterwards embarked for America, and purchasing two-twentieth shares of Massachussett’s Bay, in New England, became an original settler in that country, where the family henceforward resided, and where the lieutenant-colonel and his father were both born, the latter, who, at the commencement of the civil war, was a colonel of militia, and one of his Majesty’s council for the province of Boston, did not attempt to conceal the sentiments of loyalty and attachment to his sovereign, with which he was animated; and after many fruitless efforts to support the royal cause, becoming at last convinced that any further struggle would be ineffectual, he abandoned his native country and his property, and came with his wife and children to England, supporting an honourable independence on an estate which still belonged to him in the island of Jamaica. Though his family was large, and the losses which he had suffered in America were considerable, his high and noble spirit would not allow him to accept of any remuneration for the sacrifices to which his adherence to Great Britain had compelled him to submit; and he contented himself with receiving back those advances which he had actually made for the service of government. On being pressed by Lord George Germain, then H.M. secretary of state for the colonial department, to bring forward his claims he modestly answered, ‘It shall never be said, that I emigrated from my own country to become a charge on this.’ So ardent, indeed, was his attachment to our gracious sovereign, that he never could be persuaded to use his family motto, ‘Saepe pro rege semper pro republicâ;’ because, though these words when properly construed, are expressive of the purest patriotism, he was apprehensive lest they might be misinterpreted, and considered as conveying a sentiment unfavorable to monarchical principles. Such was the father of the gallant Lieutenant-Colonel Vassall, who, from the first hour in which he became a soldier, to the moment of his honorable death, seemed only to exist for the profession which he had chosen, and for the country which he served.
“The Vassall arms were a cup and sun; a ship for a crest. The lieutenant-colonel’s descendants have been granted the following heraldic honors, commemorative of his heroic death:– The sun rising in full splendour from behind the breached bastions of a fortress, and above the same, the words ‘Monte Video;’ the number ‘38th’ on a canton argent within a branch of Cyprus and another of laurel, the stems uniting in saltire; and for their crest, on a wreath of the colours upon a mount vert, a breached fortress, thereon hoisted a flag, gules, with the inscription