Britain’s Prince Edward honors George Washington

On an autumn day in 1860, a bearded British man visited George Washington’s tomb at his final resting place in Virginia. While there he paused to plant a small buckeye tree. The tree would grow, and so would he, to become King Edward VII of England, King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, Emperor of India. During that humble pilgrimage, the then Prince Albert Edward, began a long tradition of members of the British royal family visiting George Washington’s Mount Vernon, a sort of reverent homage to the man who helped end British rule, and set a rot in the Empire. Over 160 years later, on a particularly warm October day the modern Prince Edward followed his Great Great Grandfather’s tradition by laying a wreath at the tomb of Washington at his Mount Vernon home.