The Mystery of Roanoke, the first Anglican community in the New World

rakovsky · Jun 18, 2016

The colony of Roanoke is a famous mystery, as it's known as the "Lost Colony". It is also the first Anglican community in the New World.

The first baptisms were held in Roanoke, North Carolina, by the ill-fated Roanoke colony.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Anglican_Communion
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First Colony Foundation historians and board members are also supporting further historical research into the mysteries of the Roanoke colonies, including the Lost Colony.... In the summer of 2009 Dr. Horn is scheduled to be working in London and Dublin to see if Anglican Church records in those cities hold more clues to the mystery. These research efforts may eventually tell us more about both the origins of such colonists as Eleanor and Ananias Dare, as well as what may have happened to them and their famous daughter Virginia [first Englishwoman born in the New World colonies].
http://www.firstcolonyfoundation.org/archaeology/
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Everyman's History of the Prayer Book
by Percy Dearmer

Sir Walter Raleigh's colony, in 1584, brought the services of the Prayer Book to Virginia, Thomas Heriot, or Hariot, conducting them. So also his second or "Roanoke" colony, in North Carolina, brought the services of the Church. There, on August 13, 1587, Manteo, an Indian chieftain, was baptized. There also, seven days later, Virginia Dare, the first white child to be born on the continent, was brought to life, and the Church was ready to greet her and she was baptized. What became of those colonists and of Virginia Dare is one of the mysteries of history. They had completely disappeared before the next ships arrived from England, though blue eyes and other Anglo-Saxon indications among North Carolina Indians long afterward may probably suggest the fate of some of them.
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/everyman_history/American.htm
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However, Lee Miller theorizes in her book "Roanoke" that the colonists were part of a movement in England called the Separatists. She writes:

1593 Amid the furor, a Brownisst bill is brought before Parliament, directed against a Separatist sect led by John Browne. Those who refuse to attend Anglican services are to be banished from England, the death penalty invoked against any who return. Raleigh, a Member of Parliament, opposes the bill, claiming there are twenty thousand Brownists in England.

....
"On Aug 22, 'the whole company, both of the Assistants, and planters, came to the Governor, and with one voice requested him to return himself into England. Women also joined the petition, being all of one mind, and consent.' What can we make of this? This is no Anglican way to settle an issue! In both monarchy and Church, government is strictly hierarchical. Yet here on ROanoake, the colonists sound remarkably democratic. Hardly the behavior we would expect toward an Elizabethan governor. Yet it is the way Separatists might make decisions.
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https://books.google.com/books?id=A...HdvPAuoQ6AEIKjAC#v=onepage&q=anglican&f=false

Scholars still debate what the full story is about the colony's disaster.

This article says that scholars may have found where some of the colonists went:

Roanoke Colony Mystery Solved? 'La Virginea Pars' Map Holds New Clues On Disappearance Of Lost Colonists

While conspiracy theories surfaced pointing to possible explanations, recently researchers have started reinvestigating the case and found a clue on an old forgotten map of the area named “La Virginea Pars.” The map, which was drawn by the colony’s governor John White, was examined at the British Museum, where researchers found a small red-and-blue symbol believed to be a marker for a secret fort that the settlers escaped to, the Guardian Express reports.

Researchers theorize that the colony would split up into smaller groups when in danger – a strategy the colony used in the past. "It's obvious that that's the only way they could have survived. No single Indian tribe or village could have supported them ... They were over a hundred people," historian and principal investigator Eric Klingelhofer of Mercer University in Macon, Ga., told National Geographic.

Armed with this new information, researchers set out to the location on the map to dig for answers. Using magnetometers and ground-penetrating radar (GPR), researchers were able to find the area on the map, then used GPR to send radio waves underground, looking for buried objects. Iron cannons, graves and coffins were detected. Researchers also found a previously undetected pattern that may belong to a wooden structure.
....
Such "excellence of wit" [by the natives] encourages the belief that the Secotan [natives] might readily embrace the Anglican religion. The task [of missionizing] falls to Hariot, fluent in their language from days spent with Manteo and Wanchese at Raleight's house along the THames.

http://www.ibtimes.com/roanoke-colo...-holds-new-clues-disappearance-lost-colonists
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What happened was that investigators took a closer look at an old map in an English archive in the UK and found what appeared to be a covered-up symbol for a fort in another part of Virginia/NC, and then they detected cannons and coffins there with radar. But why would someone in the UK have covered up the symbol for the second fort so that it could not be found?

Above is the map with highlighting showing the patch up. Without the highlighting, the map looks like this:

Rethinking Roanoke

The more she read, the more convinced she became that professional historians and the public have been mistaken for nearly four centuries. Roanoke wasn't "lost," [Johns Hopkins graduate Lee] Miller says--it was sabotaged.
...
She mines this pattern to build a case that is meticulously sourced and, if not proven, at least provocative: A cabal masterminded by Sir Francis Walsingham, secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth I, stranded the colonists on Roanoke in the hope they would either starve, die at the hands of the Indians, or be raided by the Spanish, who had been tipped off about the new colony. The conspirators wanted to bring down Raleigh, the Queen's golden boy who had received a royal patent to all land he could settle in the New World. Desperate but resourceful, the colonists left the island and moved not up the Chesapeake Bay, as originally intended, but west into the interior of what is now North Carolina to await White's return.

Within days of the expedition's departure from Plymouth, England, for example, White's pilot, Simon Fernandez, inexplicably ordered two of the ships to abandon the third off the coast of Portugal. (Remarkably, the third ship, a flyboat carrying colonists and essential supplies, did make it to Roanoke days after the first two landed.) Once across the Atlantic and in the Caribbean, the colonists needed to take on fresh provisions and water, as well as salt for use as a preservative; they failed on all three counts because-- according to White--Fernandez obstructed their efforts. The colonists had to establish their settlement early enough in the season to plant crops. Yet Fernandez wasted weeks getting them to the Carolina coast. He spent days off Cape Fear ostensibly trying to get his bearings, once nearly grounding them, even though his skill as a pilot in these waters was of such renown there was a section of the coast named after him. The colonists didn't make it to Roanoke until mid-July, too late to plant fields.
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You can read the rest of the essay here:
http://pages.jh.edu/jhumag/1101web/roanoke.html

This looks like an interesting essay too:

rakovsky · Jun 18, 2016

For more reading:

A fresh take on a 400 year old mystery
https://news.google.com/newspapers?...AIBAJ&sjid=SAgGAAAAIBAJ&pg=2455,6403286&hl=en

THE LOST COLONY OF ROANOKE Uncovering a conspiracy that killed the first English settlers in America
http://www.alex.k12.in.us/highschoo...mester/The Conspiracy that Killed Roanoke.pdf

Raleigh’s 1587 Lost Colony
By Fred Willard
http://www.lost-colony.com/Link_Fix_Test.pdf
This essay proposes that the colonists moved 50 miles inland and traded in sassafras.

rakovsky · Jun 19, 2016

One debate has been whether the Powhatan massacred the Roanoke colony because there was a report from Jamestown that they had. But scholars are often skeptical about this, as the Powhatan land was far to the north of Roanoke. One idea that occurs to me is that what the Powhatan actually had in mind was their massacre of the Spanish mission near Jamestown in 1570.
See here for mention of that incident: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00437956.1982.11435719

RBrown · Jun 23, 2016

Very interesting.

rakovsky · Jun 23, 2016

The first mystery is whether the English government or a faction in it intentionally sabotaged the colony and doomed it. Le Miller's theory focuses on the role of Walsingham:

Rethinking Roanoke

A cabal masterminded by Sir Francis Walsingham, secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth I, stranded the colonists on Roanoke in the hope they would either starve, die at the hands of the Indians, or be raided by the Spanish, who had been tipped off about the new colony. The conspirators wanted to bring down Raleigh, the Queen's golden boy who had received a royal patent to all land he could settle in the New World.
...
Fernandez is a puzzling figure. He was not only the 1587 expedition's pilot, but one of 13 investors in the venture, called "assistants." Why would he have sabotaged his own investment? ... She says, "The crux of my whole theory comes down to explain Fernandez. According to state papers, he was once almost hanged for being a pirate, and Walsingham had saved him. And I thought, Walsingham?"

Sir Francis Walsingham was the queen's secretary of state, a powerful member of the English royal court. Walsingham, Miller deduced, had ample reason for wanting Raleigh to fall. Walsingham had put in place a subtle, covert strategy for undermining Spain. Raleigh, a mere courtier who nevertheless had the Queen's ear, advocated more brash, direct action against the Spaniards, and Elizabeth was listening. Furthermore, Raleigh held the lucrative patent to settle North America, something Walsingham, who was facing bankruptcy, coveted. Roanoke would be an excellent base for English raiders to use in the harassment of Spanish shipping, and Walsingham wanted control of it for his strategy against Spain. So to Miller's mind Walsingham had motive to ruin Raleigh. But did he arrange the sabotage of Roanoke? Miller kept digging.

Among the documents she read were the court proceedings of an ill-fated expedition to what is now Canada, mounted by John Rastell in 1517. Rastell had proposed colonizing Newfoundland. Henry VIII endorsed the idea, and the Lord Admiral, the Earl of Surrey, helped underwrite it. But Rastell's expedition never got past Ireland. The purser, John Ravyn, who had been provided by Surrey, found one excuse after another, many involving the provisioning of the ship, for delaying progress. Miller read this and was reminded of Fernandez. In Plymouth, England, Ravyn actually drove the ship aground, which paralleled Fernandez's near beaching of the Roanoke ships off Cape Fear. Finally, before the expedition could proceed into the Atlantic, Ravyn claimed that the season was now too far gone to continue on to Newfoundland, and had the sailors turn out Rastell and his company, stranding them on the Irish coast. During the court proceedings, Surrey, the Lord Admiral, admitted employing Ravyn to sabotage the expedition, even though he was an underwriter.
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Miller argues that one man, Walsingham, made it his business to know how previous expeditions, expeditions meant to counter Spain, had fared. That same man had access to the court records that documented the Rastell sabotage. She goes further in her book, building a case that it was Walsingham who orchestrated the delays that prevented John White from mounting a rescue mission until three years had elapsed. (The standard explanation for the delay has been intervening war with Spain, including the attack by the Spanish Armada.) By the time the governor returned to Carolina, it was too late. The colony had vanished.
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Says Miller, "Here's my answer: That's exactly why I think it's Walsingham. If you look at other Walsingham operations over the years, which are documented, it's like clever fiction. He took 18 years to bring down Mary Queen of Scots. He is the only one who regularly pulled off these vast, meticulous, painstakingly thought-out schemes--it's documented that he did this."
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Walsingham studied at Padua University in Venice. Aha! More proof of his scheming nature, complete with exclamation points. She writes: "Padua! We may have something here. Red flag! Venice was a hotbed for the new Machiavellian statecraft, and the university its training ground." But each time the story's credibility stretches, Miller comes through with a new detail that bolsters her theory.
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http://pages.jh.edu/~jhumag/1101web/roanoke.html

See also: Reader's Digest the Truth about History By Reader's Digest

There was a great rivalry between Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Walsingham at the court of Elizabeth I. Walsingham was notorius for his underhand methods. A writer of the time reckoned that "he could overthrow any matter by undertaking it and moving it so as it must fall."
....
Few men had the power to organize Raleigh's downfall, but one certainly did, Sir Francis Walsingham had both motive and means. He was facing financial ruin and as the mastermind behind the exposure of the Babbington conspiracy, had expected to be rewarded with the estates [of Babbington] that were given to Raleigh. Walsingham knew that the Roanoke settlement was Raliegh's long held dream and his weakest spot. Its failure would lead to his riination. An American historian, Lee Miller, has argued that the loss of the colonists stems from Walsingham's plot to bankrupt Raleigh, and take the land titles for himself. ... John White's diary certainly suggests dark purposes at work. He wrote how he told the colonists that "some enemies to him would not spare to slander him, saying that he went to Virginia but politically to leead so many into a country and there to leave them behind." He could have been referring to rival entrepreneurs aiming to discredit Raleigh and set up their own colonies.

https://books.google.com/books?id=oVQYl6QGq7IC&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&dq=walsingham+roanoke+colony&source=bl&ots=rgxTr09maK&sig=-eNzdug0ykcHh3TteTNhbPWsWag&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjpgrSEoL_NAhWDGh4KHZlvBP4Q6AEIWjAJ#v=onepage&q=walsingham roanoke colony&f=false
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rakovsky · Jun 25, 2016

See also:
HIDDEN MAPS, HIDDEN CITY:
THE JAMESTOWN CONNECTION TO THE LOST COLONY
http://www.lost-colony.com/Hidden_Maps_Hidden_City.pdf

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The Mystery of Roanoke, the first Anglican community in the New World

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