Wet-nurses in early modern England: some evidence from the Townshend archive

By Linda Campbell

Medical History, Vol.33:3 (1989)

Introduction: Between them Dorothy McLaren and Valerie Fildes have pioneered the study of English wet-nursing. In her work on the parish of Chesham during the late sixteenth century, McLaren drew attention to the way in which prolonged lactation reduced fertility. Believing that most mothers understood this, she suggested that some women might have become wet-nurses in order to limit family size. Fildes, casting her net much wider, has looked at wet-nursing from the earliest times until the present day. In her work on the early modern period, Fildes has focused upon the Home Counties, where nursing babies from London was almost a local industry. In particular, she has pointed the danger of confusing parish nurses, who were often themselves on poor relief and therefore not in a position to do the best for their charges, with professional wet-nurses who were usually well-paid and well-respected. A failure to distinguish between these two types of nurse has led some historians, most notably Lawrence Stone, to associate all wet-nursing with parental indifference and neglect.

Click here to read this article from PubMed Central

Masters and servants: the Hudson’s Bay Company and its personnel, 1668-1782

By Scott P. Stephen

PhD Dissertation, University of Manitoba 2006

Abstract: During its long first century (1670-1782), the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) developed personnel practices not on the basis of abstract policy but by patching together experiments and expedients. Its initial vulnerability increased the value of loyal and experienced servants, and frequent shortfalls in wartime recruitment allowed old hands to demand and receive higher wages and gratuities. Peace after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 allowed the Company to prune its payroll and to resume the carefully optimistic expansion that French attacks had interrupted in 1686. This required a larger labour force, but recruitment processes remained relatively unchanged from previous years (although Orkneymen became increasingly prominent). Expanding operations in the mid-eighteenth century imposed greater regularity on existing ad hoc methods of recruiting and retaining personnel, but labour needs did not expand rapidly enough to unduly strain those methods.

Increasing inland travel and trade after 1743 placed new demands on servants by requiring that ‘extraordinary’ labour become ‘ordinary’. The Committee discovered that this could only be done with ‘encouragement’, the slow pace of which hampered inland ventures into the 1780s. Inland operations changed the nature of HBC service and influenced the way master, factor, and servant interacted; they also illuminated the practices and assumptions which had been prevalent since Utrecht and probably before.

The HBC drew its labour force from the competitive labour ‘market’ of early modern Britain: the movement of men to and from the Bay was an aspect of domestic labour mobility. The relationship between the Committee and their employees was that of master and servants, heavily influenced by the circumstances of trading in Hudson Bay. Labour relations within HBC posts were framed by the dominant social construct of early modern Britain, the patriarchal household-family, made up of a master (the patriarch) and a family of kin, apprentices, and servants.

Men at all levels of the Company hierarchy could try to shape the reality of their HBC experiences, but did so in terms of commonly accepted ideals. Deferential behaviours and strong vertical ties existed alongside tension and negotiation: the Committee and their servants all understood the nature of ideal master-servant relationships, but they also had experience of the realities of life in various kinds of households. The Company’s servants internalized and practised the expected values of deference and submission, but did so without abandoning or deferring their own self-interest; indeed, they could use their mastery of the language to advance their own interests. The household-factory was the fundamental social unit of HBC establishments. Although membership changed, the institution maintained continuity over time. Furthermore, each household-factory was internally held together, and bound to other household-factories and to the London Committee by ties of patronage, brokerage, and friendship, that mediated the network of horizontal and vertical relationships.

Click here to read this thesis from the University of Manitoba

Rainbow for a Reign: The Colours of a Queen’s Wardrobe

By Jane Lawson

Costume, Volume 41 (2007)

Abstract: This paper evaluates the wardrobe of Queen Elizabeth I on the basis of the colours that she wore. The author takes an often quoted comment, that Elizabeth I stated ‘these are my colours’ of black and white, and using evidence collected from the New Year’s gift rolls provides details of over thirty different colours worn by the queen. The article examines the colours in groups to see if they were associated with a particular time in Elizabeth’s life, a particular occasion or activity. The paper is supported by appendices providing a glossary of colour and dress terms, the years when particular colours were worn, how they were used, if they were used in combination with other colours and a list detailing the locations of the extant gift rolls.

Click here to read this article from Ingenta Connect

New accounts of the first performance of Rule Britannia uncovered by an Oxford University historian suggest that it was not initially received as an anthem of triumphant British national identity but as a reinforcement of opposition to King George II.

Oliver Cox of the History Faculty came across two letters between audience members at Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, the home of Frederick, Prince of Wales, on 1 August 1740, where Rule Britannia was first performed as the finale to Alfred: A Masque.

The letters suggest that although the audience enjoyed the song, they did not interpret it as a patriotic expression of British national identity but as a rallying cry which stressed the key beliefs of a group of politicians opposed to the King and PM. This audience had declared themselves in opposition to the politics of King George II and his Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole.

A letter from Martin Madan, an equerry to Prince Frederick, to his wife, concluded that ‘the whole is a noble Lesson & proper to be exhibited to a Prince that durst hear Truth’.

Mr Cox said: ‘This new evidence suggests that Alfred was not just, as previous scholars have suggested, a general comment on kingship, but was in fact a highly specific response to a specific set of political problems that existed in the summer of 1740. In many ways, Rule Britannia could be compared to the D-Ream song Things Can Only Get Better which Tony Blair used as a soundtrack to Labour’s election victory in 1997.’

He added: ‘To understand the original aim of Rule Britannia, we have to look at the context in which it was written and the political views of the audience, which was in crisis. Two of the most important members of this group of princes, peers, politicians and poets had recently died, and with them any chance of creating a coherent opposition group in the House of Commons. Alfred: A Masque was commissioned by the Prince of Wales who opposed his father’s policies to unite the warring factions and present them with a vision of a new type of king.‘

The letters also provide a detailed description of the setting and a glowing report of the lyrics. Martin Madan described how ’50 little Boys cloath’d in Blew wth Grenadier Caps were divided on each Side, holding a large wax Torch, by which means the illumination was very fine.’

A letter written by a Welsh aristocrat to a fellow audience member, Lord Guildford, recalled: ‘Methinks I saw you stretching your Melodious Throat in the Greatest Extasy, pronouncing Those Delightful Words; Britons Never Will Be Slaves’.

Mr Cox’s DPhil research focuses on the 18th Century cult of King Alfred the Great and he uncovered these letters in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library collections.

He said: ‘I am fascinated by how an obscure Anglo-Saxon king came to embody British national identity at a time when Britain was emerging as a global superpower. As we welcome the world to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics my research suggests the important role original archival research can play in helping us to understanding the origins of the symbols of modern day British patriotism.’

Mr Cox will present his findings at a conference in Kensington Palace in June.

Source: University of Oxford

Anne Boleyn: witch, bitch, temptress, feminist

By Hilary Mantel

The Guardian, Friday 11 May 2012

Introduction: As a small child I remember being told by a solemn nun that Anne Boleyn had six fingers on one hand. In the nun’s eyes, it was the kind of deformity that Protestants were prone to; it was for Anne’s sake, as everyone knew, that Henry VIII had broken away from Rome and plunged his entire nation into the darkness of apostasy. If it weren’t for this depraved woman, England would be as holy as Ireland, and we’d all eat fish on Friday and come from families of 12.

Anne Boleyn wasn’t exactly a Protestant, but she was a reformer, an evangelical; and the sixth finger, which no one saw in her lifetime, was a fragment of black propaganda directed at her daughter, Elizabeth I. In Elizabeth’s reign it was the duty of beleaguered papists to demonstrate that the queen’s mother had been physically and spiritually deformed. Hence, not just the extra finger but the “wen” on her throat, which supposedly she hid with jewellery: hence the deformed foetus to which she was said to have given birth. There is no evidence that this monster baby ever existed, yet some modern historians and novelists insist on prolonging its poor life, attracted to the most lurid version of events they can devise.

Click here to read this article from The Guardian

“When the Plough and Breeding of Cattle Cease, Then Will the Rebellion End”: The Adoption of Total War as English Policy in Ireland, 1558-1603

By David Antman

Chrestomathy: Annual Review of Undergraduate Research, Volume 3 (2004)

Introduction: On March 30, 1603, Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone and leader of the nine-year Irish rebellion, surrendered to Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, the English Lord Deputy in Ireland, at Mellifont Abbey. Tyrone threw himself on the floor and groveled at Mountjoy’s feet, begging for the Queen’s mercy, unaware that Elizabeth had died merely weeks before. He remained on his knees for an hour before being sent away; later he was made to submit to the Lords of the Irish Council and to the Irish Parliament in Dublin. Despite their names, these committees included members loyal to the Queen and English interests on the island. Tyrone was a broken representative of a broken country; decades of Irish rebellions and English punitive actions had reduced Ireland to a state of poverty and starvation.

Elizabeth’s expeditions in Ireland were unlike those of her predecessors, who had largely left Ireland the way it had been passed to them: relatively stable and effectively independent in all but name. Ireland was never completely quiet, but no one before Elizabeth had managed the level of settlement and control that her administration accomplished. In the course of Elizabeth’s reign English dominance had been extended from the limited area of the Pale to the entirety of the island. This conquest had not been easy; the Irish were unwilling to submit to English customs and rule without a fight. Elizabeth’s predecessors had little interest in spending the men and money necessary to subdue the Irish, and so left Ireland largely to rule itself.

Click here to read this article from the College of Charleston

Little Ease: Torture and the Tudors

By Nancy Bilyeau

Published Online (2012)

On a March night in 1534, a man and woman hurried past a row of cottages on the outer grounds of the Tower of London. They had almost reached the gateway to Tower Hill and, not far beyond it, the city of London, when a group of yeomen warders on night watch appeared in their path, holding lanterns.

In response the young couple turned toward each other, in what seemed a lover’s embrace. But something about the man caught the attention of Yeoman Warder Charles Gore. He held his lantern higher and within seconds recognized the pair. The man was a fellow yeoman warder, John Bawd, and the woman was Alice Tankerville, a condemned thief and prisoner.

So ended the Tower’s first known escape attempt by a woman. But Alice’s accomplice and admirer, the guard John Bawd, was destined to enter the Tower record books too, and for the grimmest of reasons—he is the first known occupant of a peculiar torture cell used during the reigns of the Tudors and early Stuarts. The windowless cell measured 1.2m (4 square feet) and bore the faintly prim name of Little Ease. The prisoner within it could not stand nor sit nor lie down but crouched over, in increasing agony, until freed from the suffocating, dark space.

Torture and the Tower of London have long had an uneasy relationship. The echoes of those screams are part of the walled fortress’s allure, along with the X marks the spot of Queen Anne Boleyn’s and the Lady Jane Grey’s decapitations and tales of the travails of inmates Raleigh, Cranmer, Fisher and More. Today’s visitors see for themselves, in well-curated exhibits, the replicas of the rack and other devices fashioned for pain. Tower publications are emphatic: Torture took place during a brief span in its near 1,000-year history. Which is true. But it happened, and with an intensity that cannot be denied.

In 1215 England outlawed torture through the passage of Magna Carta, except by royal warrant. The first king to authorize it, reluctantly, was Edward II. He submitted to intense pressure from the Pope to follow the lead of the king of France and demolish the Order of the Knights Templar, part of a tradition begun during the Crusades. King Philip IV of France, jealous of the Templars’ wealth and power, charged them with heresy, obscene rituals, idolatry and other offenses. The French knights denied all, and were duly tortured. Some who broke down and “confessed” were released; all who denied wrongdoing were burned at the stake.

Once Edward II had ordered imprisonment of members of the English chapter, French monks arrived in London bearing their instruments of torture. In 1311 the Knights Templar “were questioned and examined in the presence of notaries while suffering under the torments of the rack” within the Tower of London as well as prisons of Aldgate, Ludgate, Newgate and Bishopgate, according to The History of the Knights Templar, the Temple Church, and the Temple, by Charles G. Addison. And so the Tower—principally a royal residence, military stronghold, armory, and menagerie up until that time—was baptized in torture.

Did the instruments remain after the Knights Templars were crushed, to be used on other prisoners? We cannot be certain, although there is no record of it. The next mention of a rack within the Tower is a startling one—an unsavory nobleman made Constable of the Tower pushed for one to be installed. John Holland, third duke of Exeter, arranged for a rack to be brought into the Tower. It is not known if men were stretched upon it or if it was merely used to frighten. In any case, this rack is known to history as the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter.

It was in the 16th century that prisoners were unquestionably tortured in the Tower of London. The royal family rarely used the fortress on the Thames as a residence; more and more, its stone buildings contained prisoners. And while the Tudor monarchs seem glittering successes to us now, in their own time they were beset by insecurities: rebellions, conspiracies and other threats both domestic and foreign. There was a willingness at the top of the government to override the law to obtain certain ends. This created a perfect storm for torture.

“It was during the time of the Tudors that the use of torture reached its height,” wrote historian L.A. Parry in his 1933 book The History of Torture in England. “Under Henry VIII it was frequently employed; it was only used in a small number of cases in the reigns of Edward VI and of Mary. It was whilst Elizabeth sat on the throne that it was made use of more than in any other period of history.”

Yeoman Warder John Bawd admitted he had planned the escape of Alice Tankerville “for the love and affection he bore her.” Unmoved, the Lieutenant of the Tower ordered Bawd into Little Ease, where he crouched, in growing agony. The lovers were condemned to horrible deaths for trying to escape. According to a letter in the State Papers of Lord Lisle, written on March 28, Alice Tankerville was “hanged in chains at low water mark upon the Thames on Tuesday. John Bawd is in Little Ease cell in the Tower and is to be racked and hanged.”

Today no one knows exactly where Little Ease was located. One theory: within the nooks and crannies of the White Tower. Another: in the basement of the old Flint Tower. No visitor sees it today; it was torn down or walled up long ago. Besides Little Ease, the most-used torture devices were the rack, manacles, and a horrific creation called the Scavenger’s Daughter. For many prisoners, solitary confinement, repeated interrogation, and the threat of physical pain were enough to make them tell their tormentors anything they wanted to know.

Often the victims ended up in the Tower for religious reasons. Anne Askew was tortured and killed for her Protestant beliefs; Edmund Campion for his Catholic ones. But the crimes varied. “The majority of the prisoners were charged with high treason, but murder, robbery, embezzling the Queen’s plate, and failure to carry out proclamations against state players were among the offenses,” wrote Parry. The monarch did not need to sign off on torture requests, although sometime he or she did. Elizabeth I personally directed that torture be used on the members of the Babington Conspiracy, a group that plotted to depose her and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. But usually these initiatives went through the Privy Council or tapped the powers of the Star Chamber. It is believed that in some cases, permission was never sought at all.

Over and over, names pop up in state papers of those confined to Little Ease:

“On 3 May 1555: Stephen Happes, for his lewd behavior and obstinacy, committed this day to the Tower to remain in Little Ease for two or three days till he may be further examined.”

“10 January 1591: Richard Topcliffe is to take part in an examination in the Tower of George Beesley, seminary priest, and Robert Humberson, his companion. And if you shall see good cause by their obstinate refusal to declare the truth of such things as shall be laid to their charge in Her Majesty’s behalf, then shall you by authority hereof commit them to the prison called Little Ease or to such other ordinary place of punishment as hath been accustomed to be used in those cases, and to certify proceedings from time to time.”

After the death of Elizabeth and succession of James I came the most famous prisoner of them all to be held in Little Ease, Guy Fawkes. Charged with plotting to blow up the king and Parliament, Fawkes was subjected to both manacles and rack to obtain his confession and the names of his fellow conspirators. After he had told his questioners everything they asked, Fawkes was still shackled hand and foot in Little Ease and left there for a number of days.

And after that final burst of savagery, Little Ease was no more. A House of Commons committee reported the same year as Fawkes’ execution that the room was “disused.” In 1640, during the reign of Charles I, torture was abolished forever; there would be no more forcing prisoners to crouch for days in dark airless rooms, no more rack or hanging from chains.

And so, mercifully, closed one of the darkest chapters in England’s history.

Nancy Bilyeau’s historical thriller, The Crown, is on sale in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. A part of the story takes place in the Tower of London. To learn more, go to www.nancybilyeau.com

Negotiating the Grand Alliance: The role of the King-Stadtholder’s corps diplomatique in establishing a new alliance between ‘Austria’, the Dutch Republic and England, 1688 – 1690

By M.B. Meerwijk

Bachelor thesis, University of Utrecht, 2011

Introduction: The central theme in this thesis is diplomacy. Diplomacy conducted by the agents of the Dutch Stadtholder and English King William III of Orange-Nassau directly before and in the wake of the Glorious Revolution of 1688/1689. From the moment William set sail for England, the Dutch Republic and England became involved in the Nine Years War, making it a truly European-wide war. The Nine Years War was fought between 1688/1689 – 1696, principally between the members of the ‘Grand Alliance’ and France. This Grand Alliance was at first formed by Emperor Leopold I of the Holy Roman Empire – though in his capacity of ruler of ‘Austria’ –, the Dutch Republic and England. The main aim of this thesis is analysing the concluding of this alliance: from late in 1688 till 1690. This analysis will be based principally on the letters sent by three diplomats in the service of William III. A second aim of this thesis is to point out the importance of the international context – the European ‘side’ so to speak – of the Glorious Revolution.

Click here to read this thesis from the University of Utrecht

Shakespeare for analysts: Literature and intelligence

By Jeffrey White

Joint Military Intelligence College, Occasional Paper No.10 (2003)

Introduction:

Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,
Our bending author hath pursued the story,
In little room confining mighty men,
Mangling by starts the full course of their glory. – Henry V

This paper is an argument and a suggestion. The argument is that what Shakespeare had to say about human behavior in the political and leadership realms is worth reading, and hearing, today. The suggestion is that analysts concerned with understanding the behavior of important individuals—leaders, commanders, supporters, family members, enemies, rivals, inner circle members, opposition figures—should do so. It is perhaps an “out of the box” idea; but I would contend that Shakespeare should be part of the canon of intelligence literature, a fundamental addition to the works that intelligence professionals read.

More precisely, I see great literature as a potential source of expertise that can be applied to intelligence issues of current interest. I would argue that today’s analysts are dominated by two camps of thought, in a fashion akin to the two cultures identified long ago by C.P. Snow—science and social science, a focus that left little room for attention to the third culture with which he was most concerned: the humanities. Although we have people with humanities or literature degrees, we do not use much of what they have learned, except perhaps for their writing skills. At this time, we cannot speak of a humanities-based approach to analysis, as we can of functional (science) or regional (social science) approaches.

Click here to read this article from Air University

After decades of unsuccessful searching, archaeologists may have their best evidence ever of the possible fate of Sir Walter Raleigh’s “Lost Colony.” It comes in the form of a clue from Sir Walter himself, secreted within the 425 year old “Virginea Pars” map drawn by his expedition to site the first English colony in the New World.

At a conference held yesterday at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, archaeologists and scholars from the First Colony Foundation and the British Museum discussed the newly discovered information previously hidden within the map and possible implications for understanding the eventual fate of Raleigh’s “lost colonists.”

The “Virginea Pars” map was produced from explorations conducted by members of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke Colony of 1584-1590. The remarkably-accurate map depicts the coastal area from Chesapeake Bay to Cape Lookout, including the location of many native American villages visited by the colonists. However, until now the map provided little information about the location of his planned “Cittie of Ralegh.”

For Sir Walter Raleigh the map likely served to document the accomplishments of the Roanoke Colony to Queen Elizabeth and to his investors, and as a plan for the colony’s future development. The discovery to be announced shows that the “Virginea Pars” map is an unexamined masterpiece that still guides modern efforts to locate the “Lost Colony.”

Portions of a unique late 16th-century map in the British Museum (which documents voyages to North America for Sir Walter Raleigh), have recently been examined to reveal hitherto unseen lines and symbols that have been hidden for centuries. Using a variety of non-contact scientific methods carefully chosen to be safe to use with early paper, researchers at the British Museum in London are peering at and through two small ‘patches’ of paper applied to an Elizabethan map of parts of modern eastern North Carolina and tidewater Virginia.

The first patch appears to have been applied primarily to allow the artist to alter the coastline. The second patch offers even more exciting finds. It appears to cover a large ‘fort’ symbol in bright red and bright blue and, and has a very faint (just barely visible to the naked eye) but much smaller version of a similar shape on top. There is also a red circle under the patch that may represent an Indian town. The map is part of a large set of watercolours that gave England and Europe its first accurate views of the new world of North America. Drawn by John White, these watercolours from the British Museum collection were the centrepiece of the New World exhibition held at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh in 2007.

Scholars of the North Carolina-based First Colony Foundation, a non-profit group utilizing archaeology and historical research to learn more about what are called the Roanoke Voyages, note that one of the altered portions of the map is an area explored by Raleigh’s colonists in 1585 and 1586 and where the 1587 “lost colony” may have tried to resettle. The English had hoped to set up a series of outposts linking their territory, called Virginia in honor of Elizabeth I, northward to the James River, where a later generation established Jamestown, the first permanent English colony. First Colony Foundation researchers believe that it could mark, literally and symbolically, “the way to Jamestown.” As such it is a unique discovery of the first importance.

Ongoing First Colony Foundation research to identify the location of White’s iconic drawing of the Algonkian village of Secotan in the Pamlico region, prompted Brent Lane, Adjunct Professor of Heritage Economics at the UNC Kenan Institute and a FCF scholar, to begin a careful comparison of White’s map with what he knew of the local geography. Lane became intrigued with the paper patches and contacted the British Museum to determine whether they covered any words or images drawn on the paper beneath. Curators, conservators and scientists at the Museum have made preliminary investigations that are making new discoveries on a map of old discoveries.

There is no visible tear or cut in the paper under the two small paper pieces the researchers call “patches.” It was common for artists at the time to make corrections to their work by placing clean pieces of paper or “patches” over areas they wished to change or re-draw. The northern, almost square patch (number 2) covers an area of the Albemarle Sound, where the Roanoke and Chowan Rivers join. There is only a slight correction to the coastline on its upper surface, but beneath it, on the original surface, is the possible fort symbol, which is visible only when the map is viewed on a light box. The southern patch (number 1) covers initial sketches of part of the Pamlico River, depicting its northern shoreline with ships sailing past. Here the watercolour image on the patch makes corrections to the drawing of the shoreline and river channels and the placing of some of the villages. Comparison of these changes to a sketch map sent back to England during the 1585 exploration may offer clues to the location of the important Algonkian town of Secotan.

These early English voyages to North America sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh led to the exploration of the area around the Outer Banks and two attempts at colonization on Roanoke Island, NC. John White came with the expedition that brought the first colony in 1585, and most of his famous depictions of the North Carolina Algonkians and the local flora and fauna are from that voyage. This first, military colony returned to England in 1586. The following year White led another colony of 118 men, women and children to establish the “Cittie of Raleigh,” of which White was to be the governor. But the colonists were landed on Roanoke Island and White returned to England for supplies shortly after the birth of his grand-daughter, Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America. Delayed by the attack of the Spanish Armada in 1588, White was unable to return to find his colonists until 1590, when he found the site deserted and the word “CROATOAN” carved into a post. This was the name of an island at Cape Hatteras occupied by friendly Native Americans, but all evidence indicates that in 1587 the colonists had planned to move inland.

First Colony Foundation archaeologist Eric Klingelhofer of Mercer University, whose First Forts: Essays on the Archaeology of Proto-Colonial Fortifications, examined defences of this period, says the newly visible symbol of a Renaissance-style fort could “be associated with White’s assertion that ‘at my comming away they were prepared to remove from Roanoak 50 miles into the maine.’”

These first English attempts at American colonization were followed twenty years later by a permanent colony on the James River. Soon after the establishment of ‘James Fort,’ the English settlers went in search of survivors from Raleigh’s 1587 colony. A sketch map they sent back to England bore a notation at the upper Albemarle Sound where the “king of paspahegh reported our men to be.” The Jamestown colonists were never able to confirm the report.

First Colony Foundation historian James Horn of Colonial Williamsburg suggested in his recent book, A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, that the majority of the 1587 colonists relocated at the head of Albemarle Sound on the Chowan River. He comments that “documentary evidence suggests an early and sustained interest by the English in the Chowan and Roanoke River systems. The discovery of a symbol seemingly representing a fort where the Roanoke and Chowan Rivers meet provides dramatic confirmation of the colonists’ interest in exploring the interior (where riches were to be found) and connecting the two Virginias, Roanoke and Jamestown.”

John White entitled the map “La Virginea Pars” and based his work upon surveys and navigational measurements made by the Elizabethan mathematician and scientist Thomas Harriot. This map shows the coastal area from present Cape Henry, VA to Cape Lookout, NC, with a degree of accuracy that it is often compared to NASA satellite photographs. The British Museum reference number for the map is 1906,0509.1.3 and it can be found in the Museum’s online database.

Source: First Colony Foundation