Edward Maria Wingfield (1550–1631Date 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.) 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"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. 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.Kingsbury, pp. 12, 18; Barbour, p. 91. 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",Wingfield, E.M., p. 43, q. in Wingfield, J., p. 341. 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.Sheler, The Smithsonian, January 2005, p. 53; and see n. 74 re 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."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)
Early life
Wingfield was born in 1550 at Stonely Priory (dissolved ca. 1536), near Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire (present-day Cambridgeshire), the eldest son of Thomas Maria Wingfield, the Elder, and Margaret (née Kaye; from Woodsome, Yorkshire).See n. 2 (Birth). Hasler, III, p. 635; Woodsome Hall, Fenay Bridge, Huddersfield. and was raised as a ProtestantWingfield, Jocelyn, p. 19. His middle name, "Maria" (pronounced [mah-RYE-uh]),Edward Maria's grandfather, Sir Richard Wingfield, ambassador, in 1513 was dispatched to Fontainebleau, in France, to repatriate the newly widowed Mary Tudor, Queen of France. Because Sir Richard Wingfield stood by while she married her lover, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, there in France, without the permission of Henry VIII, Mary agreed to be godmother to Thomas Wingfield, the second son of Sir Richard and his wife Bridget, and the child became Thomas Maria or Thomas Mary Wingfield. This middle name was proudly borne and continued by Thomas Maria to two of his ten children: Edward Maria Wingfield and Thomas Maria (the Younger). The 6th and last Edward Maria Wingfield of the family died in Richmond, Virginia in 1984. With the Dissolution of the Monasteries and Henry VIII's break with Rome in 1534, Mary, the Dowager Queen of France, accepted Anglicanism as the state religion, as did the majority of the population, including Wingfield. 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 (who had in 1536 renounced his calling as a priest), died when Edward was seven years old.Thomas Maria Wingfield graduated from Oxford in 1534, having held the living of Warrington, Lancashire, from his mid-teens, of his father (died 1525), then-Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Around 1536, Thomas Maria renounced an ecclesiastical career, and became Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1553. (Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, q. in Victoria County History, Lancashire, vol. III, 1907, p. 311.) The surviving Stonely Priory House, thought to have originally been a barn, is a listed building. (Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, 1926, Hunts, p. 176; Plate 47.) Before he was twelve years of age, his mother remarried, to James Cruwys of Fotheringhay,Fotheringhay Church Registers; Bridges, II, p. 458; Pedigree of Crews of Fodringey, 1884, p. 16; Vis. Devon, Crews of Morchard, pp. 256–257; Vis. Norfolk, 1563–64, 1589, 1613; Cal of Feet of Fines, Hunts, p. 143, Peterborough Ref. Lib.; Harl.MS 1171 f.23b; board in Fotheringhay Church porch. 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.Froude, History of England, 1870, Vol. X, p. 490; John Lodge. Peerage of Ireland, III, p. 253n, q. in Bridges, Northamptonshire, 1791, II, p. 69 note "e" – q. in Wingfield, Jocelyn. pp. 26–28. Half the list is now lost. Jaques's son Thomas was then only eight years old. His uncle held Wickham Skeith, a manor in Suffolk,W.A. Copinger. Manors of Suffolk, III, 1909, p. 337, q. in Wingfield, Jocelyn, pp. 20, 151. 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 (four miles from Letheringham).
Law school In 1575–76, Wingfield returned to England, where in 1576 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn,Lincoln's Inn Admissions Book for 1576, April; "Edward Maria Wingfield of Huntingdonshire, Barrister [attorney] of Furnivall'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