LITMIR.BIZ

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put in charge of designing the defences, Archer of laying out the street plan for the town. The best-known work in English on military architecture at the time was a translation of a French work by William de Bellay called The Practice of Fortification. It was sufficiently influential for Christopher Marlowe to lift a section verbatim for his popular first play, Tamburlaine the Great, and for Percy’s brother the Earl of Northumberland to hold a copy in his library. Rule one for Bellay was: ‘the figure triangular is not to be used at all’ in the ‘delineation’ of a fort, because it resulted in long, penetrable walls and vulnerable bulwarks or ramparts at each corner. Similar advice had been offered to the Roanoke settlers, who had been told to build their fort in the shape of a pentangle. Despite these warnings, Kendall chose a triangular shape. This was possibly because the river acted as a natural defence, and de Bellay had also advised that ‘if any part [of the fort’s proposed location] may be better assured of the situation than the rest’, that was the side to have any sharper angles or longer walls. Kendall proposed putting the fort’s longest side, which measured 140 yards, along the waterfront, with two shorter sides, 100 yards each, jutting into the island, enclosing an area totalling just over an acre.²⁴

      Meanwhile, Archer had been working in the pinnace, drawing up plans for the town that would lie within the defensive walls. Wingfield had gone to inspect them. He rejected Archer’s work, and a confrontation ensued, defeating the president’s efforts to give Gosnold’s restless, rebellious friend a useful role. Alternative plans were drawn up, which, from archaeological remains, appear to have allowed for a row of barracks next to the southern palisade, officers’ dwellings on the western side, a storehouse to the east, and a church in the middle.

      The labourers worked around the clock, with the reluctant help of the ships’ crews, and within days Kendall’s design was taking shape. The curtain wall was made of rows of split logs, sunk into a ditch that was backfilled to keep them upright. At each corner, large crescent-shaped bulwarks were built using the same method, upon which the company’s carpenters constructed stout platforms to carry lookouts and artillery. Winches and cranes were erected to lift some of the ‘four and twenty pieces of ordnance’ brought from England, and soon the bulwarks bristled with culverins, enormous cannons with barrels 11 foot long, capable of shooting 18-pound shot over a distance of nearly 2,000 foot.²⁵

      While excavating around the neck of land connecting the island to the mainland, workers found a stream flowing down a small bank. In the glint of the trickling water they saw what looked like yellow crystals. Captain John Martin was immediately summoned to inspect what they had found. Samples were taken and, using apparatus brought from London, he performed an assay or test to see if any metal could be drawn off. The news that he had managed to extract a small amount of what appeared to be gold ‘stirred up in them an unseasonable and inordinate desire after riches’. A barrel was filled with soil taken from the surrounding area, for testing back in England.²⁶

      Meanwhile, the Indians kept up their attacks. As the fortifications rose, their tactics changed from full-frontal assaults to harassment. On Friday 29 May, they managed to shoot forty or so arrows ‘into and about the fort’ from the cover of the surrounding woodland, before being repulsed by a volley of musket fire. ‘They hurt not any of us,’ Archer wrote, ‘but finding one of our dogs, they killed him.’ The following Sunday, while feverish construction continued, ‘they came lurking in the thickets and long grass’. Eustace Clovill, a hapless offspring of Norfolk gentry, was found ‘straggling without the fort’, and was shot six times. His brief moment in history came when he staggered back to the fort with the arrows still stuck in his body, and shouted, ‘Arm! Arm!’ before collapsing. He died eight days later.

      On Thursday 4 June, as dawn was breaking, one of the settlers left the fort ‘to do natural necessity’ in the latrine just beyond the palisade. As he squatted on the ground, he was shot with three arrows by Indians who had ‘most adventurously’ crept under the bulwark blocking access to the island.

      The relentless assaults soon took their toll on English morale, and the acrimony that had been stewing since the ships were stuck on the Downs erupted with new vigour. The council began to disintegrate. ‘The cause of our factions was bred in England,’ Smith later observed, but ‘grew to that maturity among themselves that spoiled all’.

      Religion remained a point of contention. On arrival, the settlement chaplain Robert Hunt had implemented a puritanical regime of daily common prayer, and lengthy sermons on Sunday mornings. Wingfield made his dislike of such pious earnestness known, and on several occasions found opportunities to miss, and even to cancel, the sermons.

      In fact, according to their accusers, Wingfield and Newport had no interest in the venture’s spiritual mission, even though it featured prominently in the Royal Charter. They were merely ‘making Religion their colour, when all their aim was nothing but present profit’.

      The most forceful critic was Captain Smith. Having kept uncharacteristically quiet during the James river expedition, he was driven by an overwhelming sense of vindication to confront Wingfield and the council. He demanded that the president take manful possession of this virgin land. The Indians had not cultivated it, so it no more belonged to them than to the wildlife in the undergrowth or the birds in the trees. In any case, these vast expanses contained ‘more land than all the people in Christendom can manure, and yet more to spare than all the natives of those Countries can use’.²⁷

      This land was waiting to be fashioned ‘by labour’ into a new ‘commonwealth’, a new England. What could command more honour for a man, Smith later wrote, ‘with only his own merit to advance his fortunes … than planting and building a foundation for his posterity, got from the rude earth by God’s blessing and his own industry without prejudice to any?’ He continued:

      What can he do less hurtful to any, or more agreeable to God, than to seek to convert those poor Savages to know Christ and humanity, whose labours with discretion will triple requite thy charge and pain? What so truly suits with honour and honesty, as the discovering things unknown, erecting Towns, peopling Countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue and gain to our native mother country?²⁸

      Several of the gentlemen excluded from the council could identify with these sentiments, and began to agitate for a more active, aggressive policy. Archer started ‘spewing out … venomous libels and infamous chronicles’ about Wingfield’s government. Wingfield had ‘affected a kingdom,’ he claimed. Archer was trying to summon a parliament, Wingfield retorted. On 6 June, Archer led a group, including several soldiers who had left their positions, who ‘put up a petition to the council for reformation’.²⁹

      The content of the petition was not recorded, but its consequence was that four days later, Smith was finally absolved of all charges and made a member of the council. According to Smith’s later testimony, Wingfield was also required to pay him compensation to the value of £200, an enormous sum, which Smith claimed he magnanimously donated ‘to the store for the general use of the colony’.³⁰ The following day, ‘articles and orders for gentlemen and soldiers were upon the court of guard and content was in the quarter’, meaning that peace had been restored among the unsettled ranks.

      On Saturday 13 June, to reinforce a new but still fragile mood of accord, Newport presented the soldiers and labourers with a sturgeon 7 foot long, which had been caught by the crew of his ship. The next day, the settlement was approached by two unarmed envoys. Archer recognized one of them to be the ‘Kind Consort’ who had followed them in the early days of the James river expedition. The reappearance of this mysterious individual comforted the settlers, and he was invited into the fort, which was in its final stages of construction. The envoy endeavoured to explain what had been going on, reassuring the embattled, bewildered Englishmen around him that the chiefs of the Pamunkey and Arrohateck were still their friends,

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