Suffolk's Connection to Jamestown

The Gosnold Memorial Plaque in the Great Graveyard.

Otley Hall

There is an interesting memorial plaque on the wall of the Chapel of the Charnel House in the Great Graveyard of the Abbey, Bury St Edmunds, which was erected in 2007 as part of the celebrations to commemorate the founding of Jamestown the first British colony in the state of Virginia, U.S.A. in 1607. I have been intending to follow up researching this sign since I arrived in Bury St Edmunds but only now to the task! Astonishing to realise that the man behind the founding of Jamestown was a local lawyer, Bartholomew Gosnold, born at the family seat, Otley Hall near Grundisburgh in Suffolk in 1571. A member of a wealthy family, he had been educated at Jesus College in Cambridge University and subsequently studied law in the Middle Temple. It was probably at Cambridge that Gosnold met John Brereton a friend who accompanied him on his initial voyage of discovery in 1602 when he became the first Englishman to land on the coastline of Virginia.

A likeness of Bartholomew Gosnold
from Jamestown Museum

In 1595, Bartholomew married Mary Goldinge, of Bury St Edmunds, grand-daughter of Sir Andrew Judge, a wealthy London merchant and Lord Mayor of London in 1550-51. Mary’s wealthy cousin was Sir Thomas Smythe, founder and Governor of the East India Company and of the Virginia Company and thus, through powerful family connections of his wife, Gosnold had moved from being a mere member of the Suffolk gentry to a strong national position of influence and power. Bartholomew’s brother, Anthony, accompanied him to Virginia in 1602, as well as a cousin, also Anthony Gosnold and though his brother died quite quickly, the cousin Anthony was still living in Virginia in 1615. Bartholomew and Mary had seven children, six of whom were baptised in Bury St Edmunds between 1597 and 1607. One of their daughters married Richard Pepys, great uncle of the diarist, Samuel Pepys.

A modern representation of the Godspeed, Gosnold's
ship in 1602. Situated outside the Pilgrims' Kitchen
near St Edmonds Cathedral, Bury St Edmunds.

1597, at the request of his uncle Robert, Gosnold joined the expedition of the second Earl of  Essex, Robert Devereux, to the Azores. It was not a success but Bartholomew spent several months afterwards in privateering, gaining some knowledge about navigation as well as piracy! In any event he managed to find
investors who trusted him to lead an expedition to New England in 1602. 

In both the Elizabethan and Stuart ages, exploration and colonisation were essentially private endeavours. The Crown did not share the huge expense involved but it did subsequently grant monopolies to an individual or corporation to develop and exploit an area or product, from the colony, selected by the Crown; obviously a potentially profitable venture, commercially. So a would-be coloniser like Gosnold had to raise significant amounts of money before gathering together the essentials for the long and dangerous trip into the unknown. There were considerable financial risks for the backers and obviously extraordinary physical and financial risks for the explorers/colonisers. Sir Walter Raleigh, for instance, lost £40,000 in founding the Roanoke Colony, pledging still more to attempt to attempt to find and save the lost settlers. Hundreds of years later, it still astounds a contemporary observer that there were men brave enough, perhaps foolhardy enough, to sail into the unknown in search of new lands to settle, in the face of danger, loss and death. What seems to have been fundamentally needed for this early colonisation as well as courage, were wealth and the desire for gold and glory!

The choice of Virginia was not by chance. In the mid 1590s, Edward Hayes had written a report for Lord Burghley setting forth the rationale and procedure for would-be colonisers. The principal recommendation was that settlements should begin in North Virginia because the area’s climate compared well with the conditions and practices familiar to English settlers. Its agriculture was similar to that of England; the coast of New England produced a wealth of fish, prized in Europe, and therefore supportive of initial foothold success and eventual commercial profit. Captain Gosnold obtained backing to attempt to found an English colony in the New World and in 1602 he sailed from Falmouth, Cornwall in Concord, a small bark, with 32 on board, bound for New England and what they hoped would be a new colony. Gosnold pioneered a direct sailing route due west from the Azores arriving at Cape Elizabeth on the southern coast of Maine on 14th May 1602 intending to  set up a small fishing outpost with 20 of the crew. On the 15 May, he sailed into Provincetown Harbour which he named Cape Cod after the abundance of fish in evidence and soon sailed on, following the coastline for several days and discovering Martha’s Vineyard, which the group explored but found uninhabited. Gosnold named the area after his deceased daughter, Martha, and also after the extensive growth of wild grapes covering much of the land.

Map of Martha's Vineyard Two Hundred Years
after Gosnold discovered and named it.

Gosnold spent several years after his return to England promoting a more ambitious attempt; through his influential family contacts, he obtained from King James 1 an exclusive charter for a Virginia Company. To form the core of what would become the Virginia Colony of Jamestown, he recruited his brother, Anthony, his cousin-by-marriage, Edward Maria Wingfield, as well as John Smith [who eventually became Governor of Jamestown after Wingfield] in addition to the members of the 1602 expedition. Gosnold served as vice-admiral of this Merchant Taylor, three ship contingent. Gosnold also obtained the support of Matthew Scrivener, a cousin of Edward Maria Wingfield who became Acting Governor of the new colony but who drowned in a sad accident in 1609 along with Anthony Gosnold, Bartholomew’s brother.

Gosnold was popular among the colonists and opposed the choice of site for the colony at Jamestown Island as he perceived it to be an unhealthy location but was anyway appointed a member of the resident council for the new settlement. He was, however, over-ruled about the choice of location by Edward Maria Wingfield, President of the Council but Gosnold nonetheless, helped design the fort for the initial colony. He died from malaria [some sources say ‘dysentery and malnutrition’] four months after the party landed on 22 August, 1607, rather sadly underlining his opinion of the unsavoury climate of the new Jamestown location. By the first winter of 1607, only 50 of the original colonists remained alive and the colony suffered continuing hardship; Jamestown did not prosper until the 1640s.

Grave of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold 1571-1607
Established in 2003/4

In 2003 archaeologists uncovered what they believed to be Gosnold’s remains, just outside the grounds of the historical settlement. Although DNA testing proved inconclusive, it is virtually certain that, four hundred years after the event, his correct internment site has been located. The coffin contained the skeleton of a male aged in his late thirties and between 5 feet and 5 feet 6 inches tall. This could have applied to five members of the party but there was a ceremonial staff, lined up along the edge of the coffin, which implied that this was to identify a person of some importance. Burial goods were never left at this time normally and Gosnold was said to have been buried "with full honours."

Painting of the early Jamestown settlement