The Washington Ancestry, Charles A. Hoppin, 1932, Vol 1, p 107 - 108
Thomas when in his 19th year went to Spain as page to Prince Charles, who a year later, became King of England. The sad event in this sojourn in Spain is revealed in a letter published at Aberdeen, in 1711, in the ninth edition of the work entitled, "Familiar Letters on Important Subjects, wrote from the year 1628 to 1650 by James Howell, Esqt., Clerk of the Privy Council to King Charles I", dated at Madrid, August 15, 1623: "Mr. Washington the Prince's Page is lately dead of a calenture, and I was at his burial, under a fig-tree behind my Lord of Bristol's house*. A little before his death on Ballard, an English Priest, went to tamper with him: and Sir Edward Varney meeting him coming down the stairs of Washington's chamber, they fell from words to blows, but they were parted. The business was like to gather very illblood and come to a great height, had not Count Gondamar quasht it; which I believe he could not have done, unless the times had been favourable, for such is the reverence they bear to the Church here, and so holy a conceit they have of all ecclesiastics, that the greatest Don in Spain will tremble to offer the meanest of them any outrage or affront."
*The British Embassy at Madrid - Thomas Washington was a Protestant and so denied church burial in Spain.
