The Colonial saga of the -Peale family began, as did so many other proud Southern family sagas, with felony in England. The painter's father, Charles Peale, came from a line of country par­sons in Rutlandshire, but on him a more glorious destiny seemed to shine; he was the acknowledged heir of a rich uncle, Charles Wilson. Basking in golden prospects, he spent a gay term at Cam­bridge and then, turning his back on the ministry, which was the career selected for him by his father, he set up as a dandy in Lon­don. His son was to hear that he had kept a mistress. But however much money he might inherit, for the moment his purse was empty; he secured an appointment in the post office. Although his salary was small, graft was the established rule, and soon his delighted eyes watched candlelights flash on his mistress's jewels and on the fine wines that graced his table. However, as ill luck would have it, an honest man got into the government. The post office was in­vestigated and Peale convicted of embezzling the huge sum of nine­teen hundred pounds. He was sentenced to death. But the po­litically powerful cousin of one of his superiors had the sentence commuted to transportation. Charles Peale was exiled to Mary­land.

The felon seemed a dazzlingly fine gentleman to his provincial neighbours. Able to boast that he had been to Cambridge, he was in such great demand as a schoolmaster that he was called to pre­side in rapid succession over three leading Maryland academies. "Young gentlemen," he advertised in the Maryland Gazette, "are boarded and taught the Greek and Latin tongues, writing, arith­metic, merchant's accounts, surveying, navigation, the use of globes from the largest and most accurate pair in America, also many other parts of mathematics, by Charles Peale." His distinguished bearing and obvious erudition made him the pride of each of the towns in which he lived, and he was often called to officiate in the pulpit when the minister was absent.

However, the former dandy was not impressed. He still expected his uncle's fortune, and'in addition seemed, despite his recent nar­row escape from the gallows, to regard a political appointment in the New World as his due; he demanded in letters home that his former colleagues use their influence to procure for him the im­portant and well-paid office of County Sheriff. We can only draw the conclusion that during his trial he had shielded his superiors, several of whom were later convicted of fraud, and that they had promised to take care of him.

In Annapolis, where he was teaching school, Peale met Margaret Triggs Matthews, a pretty widow. They had a gay time together that made the Englishman almost forget his exile, but their care­free relationship was suddenly clouded by a grave-faced announce­ment from the lady. Peale married her and tried to hush the breath of scandal by leaving Annapolis; he accepted the headmastership of a school in Queen Annes County, Maryland. On April 15, 1741, six months after his parents' wedding, a boy was born and named Charles Willson Peale after the rich uncle.

A year later the schoolmaster moved again, settling in near-by Chestertown, where he wielded his birch at the Kent County School. Here the future painter spent his'childhood in an atmos­phere of expectancy. Boats from London to Maryland were not frequent, and as each one became due the elder Peale forgot his pupils, stared absently at the largest and most accurate globes in America; surely this time word would come that he had inher­ited a fortune or was being pushed for some county office. Always on the brink of affluence, he squandered the few pounds he actu­ally had in his pocket, for, as his son wrote, he had been "used to good company." Although the boy sometimes went hungry and cold, he was proud of his father's fine clothes and reckless manner, which were, he insisted, a proof of "spirit."