Edward Maria Wingfield
Edward Maria Wingfield was a soldier, Member of Parliament, 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" 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. He recruited 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", and because of lack of food, death from disease, and attack by the "naturals", Wingfield was made a scapegoat and was deposed on petty charges. 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.
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.
Early life
Wingfield was born in 1550 at Stonely Priory, near Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire, the eldest son of Thomas Maria Wingfield, the Elder, and Margaret. and was raised as a Protestant His middle name, "Maria", was inherited from his father who had been named after both his godparents, Thomas after Thomas Wolsey a member of the Wingfield family on his mother's side and Maria, derived from Mary Tudor, Queen of France who was related to the Wingfields by marriage as her husband, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, was part of the Wingfield family.Edward's father, Thomas Maria Wingfield, MP, died when Edward was seven years old. Before he was twelve years of age, his mother remarried, to James Cruwys of Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire, who became his guardian; yet the father figure in his early years appears to have been his uncle, Jacques Wingfield, one of six contemporary martial Wingfields.
Colonisation in Ireland
Jacques Wingfield was from 1559 to 1560 until his death in 1587, Master of the Ordnance in Ireland, Constable of Dublin Castle and an Irish privy councillor. When Edward Maria was 19 years old he apparently accompanied his uncle, one of the key settlers involved in building a plantation in Munster, Ireland, with Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir John Popham, among others. His uncle held Wickham Skeith, a manor in Suffolk, next to the future living of the great geographer, Richard Hakluyt, the Younger at Wetheringsett – both some from Letheringham Old Hall, the ancestral home of the Wingfield family, and from Otley Hall, ancestral home of the Wingfields' cousins, the Gosnold family.Law school
In 1575–76, Wingfield returned to England, where in 1576 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, the law school, having first passed through its "feeder", Furnivall's Inn. Before completing his legal training, the lure of the drum called him to the Low Countries.Soldiering in the Netherlands
Alongside his brother, Captain Thomas Maria Wingfield, for at least four years, Edward fought as a foot company commander in the Low Countries for the Dutch Republic against Spanish invaders, including in 1586 at the Battle of Zutphen, thereby gaining experience in the defence of forts and in skirmishing. He, his brother and Sir William Drury, were noted in the Army Roll of 1589 as "captains of success". In the first half of 1588 he was taken prisoner together with the virginiaphile Sir Ferdinando Gorges, 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. 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. He and Gorges were, however, no earlier than June 1589, released as part of a prisoner exchange.Soldiering in Ireland
In the 1590s, Captain Wingfield was garrisoned at Drogheda, Ireland – where commanders reported for pay, rations and munitions to the Clerk of the Cheque & Muster-Master, Colonel Sir Ralph Lane, the former Deputy Governor of Sir Walter Ralegh's ill-fated 1584–86 Roanoke Colony. Lane was Wingfield's father's old neighbour in Orlingbury, near Kimbolton.Service in Parliament
In 1593, Wingfield was a member of parliament for Chippenham, Wiltshire, one of five Wingfield family MPs – a seat obtained for him by his neighbour, Anthony Mildmay of Apethorpe, probably encouraged by Wingfield's cousin, Sir Robert Cecil. He may have sat on a committee considering cloth in March, but this he decided was not for him, and he returned shortly afterward to the soldier's life at the Dundalk Garrison in Ireland.Kimbolton School Governor
Wingfield was a Feoffee, or Governor, of Kimbolton School in 1600 – which riled his old fellow-colonist from 1569 in Ireland, Sir John Popham, a keen promoter of Virginia; and indeed they clashed over getting their own men onto the school's Board of Governors. 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. Despite his pleas, Queen Elizabeth I never permitted Sir Edward to return home.Organizing the Virginia Expedition
Getting the Virginia Expedition Moving
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 , 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."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.. Gosnold may have been "Captain Gosnell" who, in 1604 at a dinner in the Isle of Wight made some "intemperate" comment about the King, so perhaps causing important people to shun him. There is no record of Smith 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.
Wingfield was involved in fundraising and was one of the biggest backers of the venture, with family friends, Sir Thomas Gates, Sir William Waad , Sir Thomas Smythe, John Martin, Sr., Sir Oliver Cromwell and Captain John Ratcliffe. Barbour wrote: "John Smith was unaware, always, of the importance of the lever – the legal and financial backing that got the voyage going."
Recruiting settlers
In 1606, without Wingfield's input through his extensive influential contacts, it is possible that the expedition might never have sailed. In 1605–06 Wingfield and his cousin Bartholomew Gosnold, recruited about 40% of the 105 settlers. Most of the would-be gentlemen settlers were impecunious younger sons without prospects, but more than a dozen gentleman, and Captain John Martin... "clearly were gentlemen with other motives, perhaps just the adventure in its own right".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. This recruitment may have been with the help of Richard Hakluyt, Jr., who was also due to sail, or maybe he was volunteered by Wingfield's cousin-by-marriage the 3rd Lord De La Warr, the future Governor-General of Jamestown; and Hunt had his will witnessed by a Tristram Sicklemore, so may have already known John Sicklemore aka Ratcliffe. The Archbishop's approval was dated as late as 24 November 1606 – yet, sadly, at the very last moment Hakluyt, the senior of the two priests, backed out.