Richard had business interests abroad and he lived there part of the time. He owned partnerships in several ships, he was a tobacco merchant in London with his own warehouse and counting-house. He crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic almost as often as a modern American tycoon.
A London merchant at that time held a high social rating. In England he owned a country estate three miles from London. Whether Richard had inherited the estate or purchased it himself is not known. This was the property that caused him to sign his will, "lately of Stratford-Langton in the County of Essex, Esquire." The "Esquire" signified that he was the proprietor of land with tenants of his own.
Each morning Richard's coach appeared at his door and he emerged "silver-buckled and knee-breeched" and rumbled away along the road called "Strat-by-ford" toward London and his counting-house. And back again each evening, just like a modern American business man shuttling between his city office and his suburban home. But Richard finally sold his home and furnishings in England and returned to his home at Dividing Creek.
Richard Lee was the largest landowner in Virginia at the time of his death in 1664. He left his family firmly established with probably more than thirteen thousand acres of virgin tobacco land. He left his son, Hancock, land near Cobbs Hall. This son established his home there, called Ditchley.
Richard Lee stated in his will that he desired his family to live in Virginia. Perhaps after all that was his greatest legacy to his family. It turned out to be an important legacy not only to the Northern Neck, but to the American nation.
THE INDIAN DEED
Perhaps one of the strangest deeds on record is the one signed by Accopatough, King of the Rappahannock Indians.
An Englishman named Moore Fauntleroy came to the Northern Neck about 1650, settling on the Rappahannock, rather far up from its mouth. He must have been very exact in his business dealings, because when he purchased a tract of land from the Indians it was conveyed to him by a written deed, dated April 4, 1651, and signed by:
"Accopatough, the true and right Born King of the Indians of Rappahannoc Town and Towns."
For the land, it is said, Fauntleroy paid the Indians "ten fathoms of peake and thirty arms lengths of Rhoanoke." The tract is said to have been a vast domain which extended from the Rappahannock to the Potomac and some distance along both rivers.