Chatham Manor the Custis slaves as executor after his in-laws' deaths. The plantation included an orchard, mill, and a race track where Fitzhugh's horses vied with those of other planters for prize money. Fizhugh named the mansion after the British parliamentarian William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, who championed many of the opinions held by American colonists prior to the Revolutionary War. Flanking the main house were dozens of supporting structures: slave quarters, a dairy, ice house, barns, stables. Down on the river were fish traps. Fitzhugh sold the Chatham plantation to Major Churchill Jones, who had served under Col. William Washington
The Death of the Earl of Chatham of the Spanish Armada made by Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom. Chatham's imperial vision of the British Empire resting on commercial expansion via the sea and his collapsing beneath the depiction of England's greatest naval victory are connected and symbolic. Copley also shows Lord Mansfield, one of Chatham's enemies, seated in indifference. Copley rented out a private room to exhibit the painting, charging for admission. He also made money from the painting from prints of it, marketed by John Boydell. The Death of the Earl of Chatham The Death of the Earl of Chatham is the title of a 1781 oil-on-canvas painting