ABSTRACT
Ben Jonson proved a good friend to John Randolph gifted son Thomas, who successively won scholarships at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge. At the University Thomas Randolph became well known as a writer of both Latin and English verse and in addition as an organizer of dramatic entertainments. William Randolph married Mary Isham, the daughter of another Virginian planter, Henry Isham. The relationships and interconnections of the descendants of William Randolph are so complex that it is not proposed to set them out in detail. Thomas Jefferson mother was a Randolph. Her marriage with Peter Jefferson, a small planter with few pretensions to gentility, must at the time have been regarded by her family as a great mesalliance; but, as in the case of many another mesalliances, the result was good. A tolerable success as Attorney-General, Edmund Randolph was later a failure as Secretary of State, in which office he succeeded his cousin.
