After four months, on 10 September, because "he ever held the men to working, watching, and warding",[4] and because of lack of food, death from disease, and attack by the "naturals" (during the worst famine and drought for 800 years), Wingfield was made a scapegoat and was deposed on petty charges.

[citation needed] He died in England in 1631, ten weeks before fellow Jamestown settler John Smith, and was buried on 13 April at St Andrew's Parish Church, Kimbolton.

1536), near Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire (present-day Cambridgeshire), the eldest son of Thomas Maria Wingfield, the Elder, and Margaret (née Kaye; from Woodsome, Yorkshire).

[12] His uncle held Wickham Skeith, a manor in Suffolk,[13] next to the future living of the great geographer, Richard Hakluyt, the Younger at Wetheringsett – both some ten miles (16 km) from Letheringham Old Hall, the ancestral home of the Wingfield family, and from Otley Hall, ancestral home of the Wingfields' cousins, the Gosnold family (four miles from Letheringham).

[16] In the first half of 1588 he was taken prisoner together with the virginiaphile Sir Ferdinando Gorges (later Governor of Plymouth), at or near Bergen-op-Zoom, and was held in Spanish captivity with him, first at Ghent and then at Lille until on 5 September 1588 when ransoms were demanded.

[17] Nine weeks later his brother captured two Spanish officers at Bergen, but was not permitted by the Allied Commander-in-Chief, Peregrine Bertie, 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, to exchange them (though he was mysteriously paid later).

He may have sat on a committee considering cloth in March, but this (and parliament) he decided was not for him, and he returned shortly afterward to the soldier's life at the Dundalk Garrison in Ireland.

[24] Popham had just banished Sir Edward to County Galway for life, for the part he had played in the Revolt of the Earl of Essex in 1599, doubtless telling him that this would prevent his being executed, and sequestered Kimbolton Castle, sending his family to their London house at St. Andrew's, Holborn.

[26] Although Sir Thomas Gates was later hailed by Sir Edwin Sandys as the "principle forwarder" of the London Virginia Company, Captain John Smith wrote in his General Historie that, when in 1605–06 the Jamestown expedition was making no progress, Wingfield got it moving: "Captain Bartholomew Gosnold (Wingfield's second cousin), one of the first movers of this plantation, having many years solicited many friends, but found small assistance; Gosnold at last prevailed with some gentlemen, Capt John Smith, Mr Edward-Maria Wingfield, Mr Reverend Robert Hunt, and diverse others, who depended a year upon his projects, but nothing could be effected, till by their great charge and industry, it came to be apprehended by certain of the Nobility, Gentry and Merchants, so that His Majesty by his letters patents, gave permission for establishing Councils, to direct here; and to govern, and to execute there.

"[27] It has been posited that Cecil, Hakluyt and others were concerned that they should not have a leader like the Earl of Essex, who might set up his own kingdom in Virginia, and therefore sought out an old retired military man instead.

There is no record of Smith (or indeed Hunt) doing anything special, but Gabriel Archer, who was on Gosnold's 1602 "Cape Cod Expedition", had in that year been active in recruitment in London.

[32] Wingfield obtained the approval of Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, his old London vicar at St. Andrew's, Holborn, for the Reverend Robert Hunt of Old Heathfield (who was in disgrace from his arrival there in 1602 for immorality with his servant, Thomasina Plumber, and for absenteeism and thereby neglect of his congregation).

[34] Despite the fact Sir Thomas Howard (Lord Southampton's brother-in-law) and Baron Arundell, both Roman Catholics, as well as Sir Ferdinando Gorges, had funded the spring 1605 expedition to Allan's Island (in present-day Newfoundland), designed to establish a colony for British Catholicism, there is absolutely no way that Wingfield or indeed Hunt (described by Wingfield as "a man not in any way to be touched with the rebellious humours of a popish spirit, nor blemished with the least suspicion of a factious schismatic, whereof I had a special care"), could have had Catholic or Non-conformist leanings, the more so in the wake of the previous year's Catholic Gunpowder Plot.

]: Adventurers... of and for our City of London, and such others as are or shall be joined unto them of that Colony... shall and may begin their said first Plantation and Seat of that first Abode and Habitation, at any place upon the said coast of Virginia, where they shall think fit and convenient between the said four and thirty and one and forty [34–41] degrees of the said Latitude..." He and his fellow incorporators were licensed by King James I to "make habitation, plantation and to deduce a colony in that part of America "commonly called Virginia, and other parts and territories not actually possessed by any Christian prince or people, between 34 and 45 degrees North and "shall and may inhabit and remain there, and shall build and fortify [there] ... "according to their best discretion" ... "and shall and lawfully may ... dig, mine and search for all manner of mines ... yielding to us ... the fifth part only of all the same gold and silver and the fifteenth part of all the same copper... and they shall or fully may establish and cause to be made a coin, to pass current there between people... with sufficient shipping, and furniture of armour, weapons, ordnance, powder, victuals" etc...

The Charter went on to say: that Wingfield, Hakluyt, Gates and Somers could "encounter, repulse or repel and resist" all persons attempting to inhabit the said colonies "without especial licence" and that anyone they caught "trafficking" i.e. trading, should pay "five of every hundred of such wares".

[42] The Council in London had advised the settlers "to sit (set) down" possibly "on some island that is strong by nature... and not overburthened with woods... so far up as a bark (barque) of 50 tons will float ... perchance .. a hundred miles from the river's mouth" "with no native people to inhabit between you and the sea coast".

Small in number, the colonists had to decide whether to concentrate their defences against either sea attack by the French and Spanish, or against possible assault from native tribes in the area.

[49] President Wingfield was now in charge, but before long his cousin Gosnold warned him that he was driving the men too hard, ever holding them to "working, watching, and warding.

"[50] 27 May 1607: Belying Smith's statement that the weapons were kept boxed or casked, President Wingfield successfully repulsed a fierce, hour-long attack on Jamestown, leading from the front.

"... And our President, Mr Wynckfeild (who showed himself a valiant Gentleman), had one shot clean through his beard, yet 'scaped hurt" [escaped being injured], wrote Archer.

[55] He had to impose a strict rationing: "half a pint of wheat and as much barley boiled with water for a man a day, having fried 26 weeks in the ships hold, contained as many worms as grains".

Dr William Kelso and Beverly Straube of Jamestown Rediscovery are convinced that the colony's fate was "beyond the control of either settlers or their London backers".

The hardy ones survived that period and won through, establishing, as Dr. James Horn points out, "four fundamental characteristics of British America: representative government, private property, civilian control of the military, and a Protestant church";[58] along with English language and customs.

Indeed in 1608 Smith had also written: "Our store being now indifferently well provided with corn [e.g. maize] there was much ado for to have the pinnace go to England, against which Captain Martin and myself stood chiefly against it: and in fine after many debatings pro et contra, it was resolved to stay a further resolution."

[63] Some time after Kendall was shot, Wingfield came ashore from the pinnace and stated to Smith and Archer that: "I was determined to go to England to acquaint our Council of our weaknesses ...

Barbour, who wrote of "John Smith's usual exaggeration", describes "the superlative pettiness" of the charges against Wingfield..."none of the accusations against him amounted to anything – not even Archer's assertion that he was in league with the Spaniards to destroy the colony.

Since the Court (or Minute) Book for the Virginia Company for 28 January 1606 to 14 February 1615 disappeared after 1623(3) the only reliable (and likely incomplete) source is Alexander Brown's The Genesis of the United States [Vol.

The first published version was only seen by a few people (through private subscription); and so the first time Wingfield's account was seen by a larger public – in New York and Glasgow – was not until 1905–1906, in Purchas, His Pilgrimes, vol.