Patrician & Plebeian is a historical book dealing with the origin of colonial aristocracy in colonial Virginia. The author relegates the old belief that the Virginia aristocracy had its origin in a migration of Cavaliers after the defeat of the royalists in the British Civil War. He explains in detail how the leading Virginia familieswere shaped chiefly by conditions within the colony and by renewed contact with Great Britain. Author writes about the biggest and most influential families of colonial Virginia such were: he Carters, the Ludwells, the Burwells, the Custises, the Lees, and the Washingtons.
