Edward Maria Wingfield

Captain
Edward Maria Wingfield
Depiction of Edward Maria Wingfield (seated)
Colonial Governor of Virginia
In office
1607–1607
Succeeded byJohn Ratcliffe
Personal details
Born1550
Stonely, Huntingdonshire, England
Died1631 (aged 81)
Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire, England
Known for"A Discourse of Virginia"

Edward Maria Wingfield (1550 – 1631[1]) was a soldier, Member of Parliament (1593), and English colonist in America. He was the son of Thomas Maria Wingfield, and the grandson of Richard Wingfield.

Captain John Smith wrote that from 1602 to 1603 Wingfield was one of the early and prime movers and organisers in "showing great charge and industry"[2] in getting the Virginia Venture moving: he was one of the four incorporators for the London Virginia Company in the Virginia Charter of 1606 and one of its biggest financial backers.[3] He recruited (with his cousin, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold) about forty of the 104 would-be colonists, and was the only shareholder to sail. In the first election in the New World, he was elected by his peers as the President of the governing council for one year beginning 13 May 1607, of what became the first successful, English-speaking colony in the New World at Jamestown, Virginia.

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.[5] On the return of the Supply Boat on 10 April 1608, Wingfield was sent back to London to answer the charge of being an atheist, and one suspected of having Spanish sympathies. Smith's prime biographer, Philip L. Barbour, however, wrote of the "superlative pettiness of the charges... none of the accusations amounting to anything." Wingfield cleared his reputation, was named in the Second Virginia Charter, 1609, and was active in the Virginia Company until 1620, when he was 70 years old.[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.[6]

  1. ^ Date of Birth & Burial. Birth: 1550: E150/102, p. 3 Exchequer Copy (English), Lists & Indexes XXIII, PRO Kew, copy of 142/111 p. 81, 1557 (Latin), Chancery Copy of Inquisitions Post-Mortems etc, Series II, Vol. III, 4&5 Philip & Mary: "Thomas Mary Wingfield died 15 August last past and Edward Wingfield is his proper son and heir and that he is of the age of seven years at the time this inquisition was taken." (VCH Huntingdonshire – Victoria County History of Hunts – Vol. III, p. 81, London, 1936, eds. Granville Proby & Inskip Ladds quote two incorrect sources).Burial: 1631: Copy of "Bishop's Transcript, Diocese of Lincoln, of Kimbolton (Huntingdonshire – now in 2006 in Cambridgeshire) Records: "Kimbolton Parish Church [Church of England i.e. Protestant] of St.Andrew's. "Burials, 1604–1900: 13 April 1631, Edward Maria Wingfield, Esquire buryed.
  2. ^ Smith, GH, Book 3, p. 41; Woolley, Savage Kingdom, pp. 22–23; Purchas, His Pilgrimes, 1625, pp. 1, 649. Re-MP: Hasler, III, pp. 635–636 – see n. 23 below.
  3. ^ Kingsbury, pp. 12, 18; Barbour, p. 91.
  4. ^ Wingfield, E.M., p. 43, q. in Wingfield, J., p. 341.
  5. ^ Sheler, The Smithsonian, January 2005, p. 53; and see n. 74 re petty charges.
  6. ^ "Captain Smith did not carry the first colonists to Virginia; he landed there himself "as a prisoner". He did not support the colony there by his exertions; the colonists were dependent on England for supplies; they were succored by every vessel that arrived during his stay in Virginia, and at no time were they found to be more in need than when Argall arrived in July 1609, during Smith's own presidency. So long as he stayed, the colony was rent by factions, in which he was an active instrument. ... He not only failed to give satisfaction to his employers, but he gave great dissatisfaction, and was never employed by the Council of the Va. Co. again. He was in England from December 1609, to March 1614. The troubles and misfortunes of the dark days of 1611–12 caused many (who were evidently ignorant of the true state of affairs) to place confidence in Smith's claims, and under their patronage his reason for "the defailement" was published, which proves that he did not even know the real causes which produced the troubles; but the generality in England knew no better, and this tract probably gained for him the favor of four London merchants, not members of the Va. Co., who sent him on a voyage with Captain Hunt to our New England coast, March to August 1614 ... He was taken prisoner by a French vessel, while his own crew escaped. After this remarkable event, his self-assertions failed to have any value with businessmen, although he seems to have constantly sought employment abroad. For the remainder of his life, he was "a paper tiger" at home...", The Genesis of the United States of America by Alexander Brown (London, 1890)