Loudoun County lies at the northern extremity of “Piedmont Virginia.”
“Piedmont” means “foot of the mountain.” “Piedmont Virginia,” with a length of 250 miles and an average width of about 25 miles, and varying in altitude from 300 to 1,200 feet, lies just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and comprises the counties of Loudoun, Fauquier, Culpeper, Rappahannock, Madison, Greene, Orange, Albemarle, Nelson, Amherst, Bedford, Franklin, Henry, and Patrick. It is a portion of the belt that begins in New England and stretches thence southward to Georgia and Alabama.
Loudoun County was originally a part of the six million acres which, in 1661, were granted by Charles II, King of England, to Lord Hopton, Earl of St. Albans, Lord Culpeper, Lord Berkeley, Sir William Morton, Sir Dudley Wyatt, and Thomas Culpeper. All the territory lying between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers to their sources was included in this grant, afterwards known as the “Fairfax Patent,” and still later as the “Northern Neck of Virginia.”
“The only conditions attached to the conveyance of this domain, the equivalent of a principality, were that one-fifth of all the gold and one-tenth of all the silver discovered within its limits should be reserved for the royal use, and that a nominal rent of a few pounds sterling should be paid into the treasury at Jamestown each year. In 1669 the letters patent were surrendered by the existing holders and in their stead new ones were issued…. The terms of these letters required that the whole area included in this magnificent gift should be planted and inhabited by the end of twenty-one years, but in 1688 this provision was revoked by the King as imposing an impracticable condition.”
Source: History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia by James William Head.
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