A paper on “The Romance of the Hudson,” by Benson J. Lossing, published in _Harper’s Magazine_ for April, 1876, gives the following account of the wedding: “The leading families of the province and the British forces in America had representatives there. The marriage was solemnized under a crimson canopy emblazoned with the golden crest of the family.... The bridesmaids were Miss Barclay, Miss Van Cortlandt, and Miss De Lancey. The groomsmen were Mr. Heathcote, Captain Kennedy, and Mr. Watts. Acting Governor De Lancey (son-in-law to Colonel Heathcote, lord of the manor of Scarsdale) assisted at the ceremony. The brothers of the bride ... gave away the bride.... Her dowry in her own right was a large domain, plate, jewelry, and money. A grand feast followed the nuptial ceremony, and late on that brilliant moonlit night most of the guests departed.
“While they were feasting a tall Indian, closely wrapped in a scarlet blanket, appeared at the door of the banquet hall, and with measured words said: ‘Your possessions shall pass from you when the eagle shall despoil the lion of his mane.’ He as suddenly disappeared.... The bride pondered the ominous words for years ... and when, because they were royalists in action, the magnificent domain of the Philipses was confiscated by the Americans at the close of the Revolution, the prophecy and its fulfillment were manifested.”[45]
While in New York in 1756 Washington stayed at the house of his friend, Beverly Robinson, who had married a sister of Miss Philipse, and there is no doubt that her charms made a deep impression upon him, but there is no evidence that she refused him.
[Illustration: MANOR HALL, YONKERS, 1682]
After the Revolution Colonel Philipse withdrew to Chester, England, died there in 1785, and was buried in Chester Cathedral, where there is a monument to his memory. Some of his descendants are now living in England, as well as descendants of Colonel and Mrs. Morris. “A part of the Philipse estate was in possession of Colonel Morris in right of his wife, and that the whole interest should pass under the (confiscation) act, Mrs. Morris was included in the attainder.”[46] It is believed that Mrs. Morris and her sisters were the only women attainted of treason during the Revolution. “In 1787 the Attorney General of England examined the case and gave the opinion that the reversionary interest was not included in the attainder,” and was recoverable, and in the year 1809 Mrs. Morris’s son, Captain Henry Gage Morris, of the royal navy, in behalf of himself and his two sisters, sold their reversionary interest to John Jacob Astor for twenty thousand pounds sterling. In 1828 Mr. Astor made a compromise with the State of New York by which he received for these rights five hundred thousand dollars, with the understanding that he should execute a deed with warranty against the claims of the Morris family, in order to quiet the title of the numerous persons who had bought from the commissioners of forfeitures. This he did.