Posted on 07/30/2015 2:08:28 PM PDT by NYer
Historians have discovered four bodies and a mystery Catholic reliquary under the first English Protestant church in America.
In an extraordinary turn of events, graves have been discovered under what used to be the floor of America’s first Protestant church in Jamestown, Virginia – the church where Pocahontas married the English colonist John Rolfe.
The graves include the bodies of Captain William West, who was killed by Indians, Rev Robert Hunt, Jamestown’s first Anglican minister and Sir Ferdinando Wainman, the first English knight buried in America.
The grave of Captain Gabriel Archer, who died during the “starving time” when colonists were reduced to eating rats and even each other, has also been discovered.
On top of the captain’s coffin was a small silver box, marked with the letter “M”, which historians believe was a Catholic reliquary used for keeping the bones of saints.
A CT scan revealed that the box contained what looks like seven human bone fragments and a lead vial for blood or holy water.
The four graves were discovered in 2013 and historians have been working ever since to identify the graves.
The identities of the dead were announced at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
One theory behind the discovery is that Captain Archer’s parents in England were recusants and historians think it is possible that the captain was a Catholic spy working for the Spanish who was executed by the English.
Alternatively, the box could have simply been a Catholic remnant that had been adopted by Jamestown’s Protestant church.
Catholic ping!
Protestant Ping !
His parents were persecuted by the Elizabethan regime for attending Mass, as a matter of official record.
Probably a quarter of the English population at that time were still faithful.
Without an oral tradition or some document we can never know what that silver box was doing on the casket. Good work, though. Both sides of my family came through the Jamestown colony only 40 yrs later. This is memorable for me.
I lived about five miles from Jamestown when living in Williamsburg. Jamestown is a fascinating place.. the first permanent English-speaking settlement in America.
As I understand it, the water is slowly coming into Jamestown & will soon engulf the graves there. That’s why they are doing all this now.
I wonder if they get to fly a British flag over their graves?
Sure, why not? I mean it’s not like some sort of horrible Confederate flag or something, right?
Love Williamsburg, wife and I are annual members.
Oh sure, and Norfolk, and Manhattan, and Washington, D.C., and EVERYTHING! It's climate change you know that you are going to die unless you immediately demand abandonment of our federal system of government and turn over everything to the progressives who are very, very smart and can save us from this disaster. Time is short. No kidding. Send money to Hillary. We will take care of you, we promise.
Begs the question of which community will be the last English-speaking.....................
Well, then, if the water there isn’t rising & they are lying; they are desecrating graves. (I don’t know that they were trying to tie it to global warming; that wasn’t mentioned. I suppose the water could be rising there due to some other cause.) I’m not a fan of digging up anyone’s grave as the Memphis liberal blacks want to do to Nathan Bedford Forrest & his wife. - I have Indian blood on both mother’s & father’s sides of my family; so desecration of graves rankles me in a very ethereal way.
Isn’t that why they call it the Tidewater region? I’ve been to Jamestown. The settlement, the church is only some feet from the river. Rivers sometime spill over their banks.
I find it sadly profane also.
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