Suffolk's Connection to Jamestown

Gosnold Memorial Plaque, Abbey Gardens, on the
Charnel House wall.

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

Otley Hall

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 the 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. In 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. 

Part of John Brereton's
1602 record of Gosnold's
first venture.
Now faded but still precious
after 422 years.

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 find and save the lost settlers. Hundreds of years later, it still astounds an observer today, 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 exploration and 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.

Faded map of Martha's Vineyard. Drawn 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.

In 2003 Preservation Virginia announced that its archaeological dig at Jamestown had discovered the likely location of Gosnold's grave outside the James day fort. A skeleton the dig found was of a white European male in his late thirties, between 5 feet and 5 feet 6 inches tall, buried between 1607/10; carefully aligned in the coffin was the ceremonial staff of an officer. Grave goods were never buried at this time and though the description of the skeleton could have applied to five of the original explorers, it had been recorded that Gosnold was buried "with full military honours." DNA testing was abandoned after attempts to match Gosnold's with his sister's in Suffolk proved unsatisfactory, perhaps because of the age of the remains.

Gosnold's grave, established in 2005/6

 

Painting of the early Jamestown settlement

Introducing the Flemish Primitives

  

The Cloth Hall, Ypres:
an example of the wealth of Flanders
in the 15th century

An unusually full week, full of enjoyable activities and lots of culture. I didn’t manage to write a blog mainly because pockets of free time seemed to be full of locating, transferring and eventually arranging in order, over 70 images to accompany the talk I shall give to the Art Appreciation group in May. Entitled Flemish Primitives it offers a little insight into some of that group of painters established mainly during the second half of the fifteenth century, chiefly in Flanders. I have had such an interesting time researching info on Jan Van Eyck, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling and Rogier Van Der Weyden.

Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, Bruges had risen from being the administrative centre of Flanders to become one of the leading trade metropolises of the Middle Ages. The rapid economic expansion this entailed was due to the extraordinary growth of the cloth industry which formed the basis of wealth for Flanders as a whole, and in particular, for the cities of Ghent, Ypres and Brugge. Additionally, Bruges had become seriously important because of its geographical location near the sea, enhanced particularly after the catastrophic floods off the Flemish coast in 1134 created the Zwin channel which connected Brugge directly to the North Sea via the outer ports of Damme and Sluis. I knew that Bruges was seriously important during mediaeval times but had absolutely no idea that, by 1500 there were 200,000 people living in Brugge, more than twice the number then living in London and twice the number living in Bruges now!

City view of Bruges 1562
Marcus Gerards

Burgundian court in Bruges, reconstruction

The Dukes of Burgundy, one of the great early mediaeval European powers, held court in various parts of the Burgundian Netherlands encompassing the Low Countries; Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and northern France from the end of the fourteenth to the end of the fifteenth century. The era was also marked by tremendous artistic and cultural growth and this huge region under Burgundian rule attracted and inspired some of the most talented artists of the European Renaissance with the presence of the Court naturally attracting the best artists. Bruges, an especially favoured destination of the dukes, became the artistic hub while the Church, too, wealthy and of central importance to life generally, presented huge opportunities for artistic commissions. Large numbers of Flemish painters and craftsmen developed, virtually making the city of Brugge in particular, their atelier, providing the conditions for the eventual emergence of the Flemish Primitives who also colonised Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp.

Portrait of a Man.   Jan van Eyck
Considered to be a self portrait.

Possibly the best known artist of the Flemish school was Jan Van Eyck who worked with his talented older brother, Hubert, until the latter’s death in 1426. They researched over several years the properties of oil paint [though they did not invent oil paint] and Jan discovered that if the essence of turpentine was added to the pigment, it allowed a slower drying time preserving a greater shine on the pigments used. In turn, this permitted far greater detail in the scene depicted than when tempera paint, which was egg-based and presented with a more opaque characteristic, was used. Details of this important development were kept secret by the Van Eyck brothers but Jan’s painting, in particular, benefitted from this discovery.

Jan’s masterpiece, The Adoration of The Mystic Lamb, made for, and still in, St Baafskathedraal in Ghent, was, in fact, begun by his brother Hubert who probably designed this huge 12 panelled altarpiece before his death in 1426 but painted entirely by Jan before its installation on May 6 1432. It is still considered one of the major masterpieces in the world and Jan van Eyck counts as an art supremo across the centuries. That being so, it is delightful to read the lovely story of the inscription on an original frame [lost in a storm in 1521] which declared, “Hubert van Eyck ‘greater than anyone’ started the altarpiece but Jan van Eyck ‘second best in the art’ completed it in 1432.”

The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb
St Baafskathedraal, Ghent
Designed by Hubert van Eyck
Painted by
Jan van Eyck 
1432

Fromage Forever

Camembert de Normandie

Astonished to read that Brie and Camembert are all under threat of reduced production and possible extinction. This is difficult to believe as these famous French cheeses seem noble and eternal! However, there IS a shortage, increasingly so during the past
decade. Apparently it has become more difficult for cheesemakers to grow the key fungus needed to produce these cheeses. Over the years, the albino fungus has developed mutations which interfere with its normal ability to produce spores which makes it harder for the fungus to clone itself as Nature intended. The  French National Centre for Scientific Research [CNRS] has published its Camembert  research findings this week to general consternation. Camembert, for instance, is so quintessentially French that not only is it regarded as a national treasure it is also rumoured to be part of the DNA Francais! Its very name, the original Camembert de Normandie, is protected and is clearly defined as only made in certain regions with milk from specified heritage breed cows. Only then can the sacred name be used.

Statue of Marie Harel in Vimoutiers. The legend
attributes invention of Camembert to Marie.

The popular origin story is that Marie Harel, a farm woman from the Norman village of Camembert, first made the cheese in 1791 during the French Revolution. According to folklore, Marie provided shelter for a priest from Brie, home of a similar bloomy rind cheese, who was fleeing the Revolution. She was given the recipe in return for her good deed and she subsequently adapted the recipe to follow her region’s cheesemaking traditions. Historical records show that Marie existed and was indeed a farm woman from Camembert at the right time though there are no records to back up the date of 1791. However there are records to show that unique cheeses were being made in Camembert before Marie’s birth in 1761.

Marie’s descendants continued to use her name and her recipe to produce  delicious cheese, and its fame spread ,the more so when a grandson provided Camembert to the grandson of Napoleon 111 in the 1860s. In the 1920s the producers of Camembert revived Marie’s story in its publicity material and in the Thirties, a statue of Marie was erected in Vimoutiers in hommage to her historical contribution to cheese-making. The CNRS is presently exploring plans to provide producers with slightly modified strains of the fungus through genome editing. It considers the fact that these special cheeses are increasingly produced by a few large manufacturers may inadvertently or otherwise, be affecting microbial diversity.

One of my earliest discoveries when I moved to Bury St Edmunds two years ago, was a Camembert-like cheese, complete with round box and milky rind, for sale locally; it is named Baron Bigod Brie. and I remember raving about it and suggesting it was even better than the French original! I have since discovered that it is made at Fen Farm Dairy in Bungay, Suffolk and the following is filleted from the publicity about this special cheese.

Herd of Monbeliarde cattle which produce milk
perfect for Brie cheese-making.

"Baron Bigod is the finest traditional Brie-de-Meaux style cheese produced in the UK and one of only a handful of its type in the world to be made by the farmer on the farm. Beneath the nutty, mushroomy rind, Baron Bigod has a smooth, silky golden breakdown which will often ooze out over a delicate, fresh and citrussy centre. Baron Bigod is made by hand in small batches, very early in the morning so that we can use the fresh milk straight from the cow. The mould cultures are added to the warm morning’s milk and it is gently gravity-fed into small vats just a few metres from the milking parlour, where the rennet is added. The curds are carefully hand-ladled into large moulds, using traditional pelle-a-brie ladles and the young cheeses are hand salted and then aged for up to 8 weeks in a cave-like environment. It is a unique expression of the incredible milk of our free-ranging Montbeliarde cows and the diversity of our wildlife-rich grazing marshland.”

The actual result of all of this Suffolkian cheese activity, is poetry, not only in the above description, but also in the wonderful Baron Bigod Brie which emerges. In case of bewilderment, the difference between Brie and Camembert is outlined as follows:

Brie is typically aged for a longer period, around anywhere between five and ten weeks, which results in a mild and buttery flavour. Camembert, on the other hand, is aged for a slightly shorter period, usually around three to four weeks.

Fen Farm Dairy, Bungay, Suffolk.

Le Moulin de Vimoutiers.

Close-up of the famous statue of 
Marie Harel in Vimoutiers.
She is attributed in the region with inventing Camembert.

Wicked Little Letters

 

Olivia Colman as Edith Swan

Edith Swan with Rose Gooding.

To the cinema to see the above Olivia Colman film which was greatly enjoyed by the audience in Screen 1 in the Abbeygate Cinema. I always go in the afternoon and only go when the seating plan online shows me, reassuringly, that there are many viewers disinclined to view on my particular afternoon. So imagine my amazement when I entered to a virtually full cinema. A popular film then, partly explained no doubt by the expectation of lots of salty language! And a thoroughly enjoyable plot based on real incidents in Littlehampton, Sussex in 1921 when filthy poison pen letters began to arrive at various addresses. The so-called Littlehampton Libels became a national sensation, debated in Parliament, causing prurient outbursts in newspapers and local outrage. The language is often funny but the emotions powering the narrative, are not.

Much-maligned free spirit Rose Gooding
Played by Jessie Buckley.

The apparent victim and recipient of some of the letters was Edith Swan, a church-going, meek and sweet-natured, clean-living lady who lives with her parents. A wholly respectable spinster, no less. Her next-door neighbour, Rose, a single mother and unrepentant, nonconformist free spirit who loudly swears and shouts as she drinks in the local pub, as noisily free and carefree as the men around her, is considered deviant, not only by her neighbours but also, when the finger is pointed, by the police too. They choose to explain away evidence showing Rose is innocent, sufficiently long for her to spend two periods in jail. Edith is meanwhile elevated to angel status as she smiles demurely and mutters Christian asides of tolerance and forgiveness.

The original P.C Gladys Moss.
Also the first woman P.C.
to ride a motor cycle in her work

A mixture of DIY sleuthing and sustained clever observation and deduction by the only [the very first] police woman in Sussex are successful. P.C. Gladys Moss is routinely ignored or insulted by her police colleagues and the locals. She quickly pinpoints the culprit and despite constant brush-offs from  her police boss, eventually

P.C. Gladys Moss with neighbourly sleuth.
Anjana Vasan is Gladys.

manages to expose Edith. The film does also clearly convey the position of women in the Twenties; the first woman in the police force in Littlehampton is treated as less able than her male colleagues by the public and her boss. Non-conforming women are viewed as almost certainly deviant while the ideal woman conforms, agrees and tries to please. Interestingly, I have read somewhere that Gladys Moss, this very first policewoman in Sussex now has a blue plaque dedicated to her in Worthing in Sussex, for her pioneering work in that difficult role.

Edward Swan, Edith's father.

An interesting element in the story [some might say, the whole basis of the narrative] is the outright bullying and control exercised by Edith’s tyrannical father of whom both her silent mother and the eagerly obedient Edith, are frightened. He treats his daughter cruelly, giving her outlandish childhood punishments like writing out 200 ‘lines’ and wholly restricting and controlling her behaviour by barking commands and restrictions in the wholly ‘normal’ expectation of obedience. I think this is now referred to as compulsive control, often witnessed in marriages that break down but here utilised with relish by the father. This is a chiefly light-hearted film but it is, effectively also, a story of a toxic family dynamic which Edith attempts to survive. The subsequent rage experienced by Edith emerges in the entirely untypical language [for her] of the anonymous letters she writes. Her fury, long repressed, has to find an outlet and after 40 years or so of unending control and domination by her father, she finds an escape in the writing and release of the letters. She discovers a secret joy in the shockingly obscene language she can secretly use to hurt and upset others; here is a hidden therapeutic power Edith stumbles on which nurtures her self esteem and represents her little silent victory over the forces of control and coercion.

This could have been a much darker, perhaps more interesting, film though probably not one to fill Screen 1 at the Abbeygate on a wet Saturday afternoon!

Edith Swan in newspaper photo

Rose and supportive neighbours

Edith Swan in 1923

Mary Ann Swan,
Edith's mother in 1923.

Rose Gooding in 1923.