The Gosnolds of the generation into which Bartholomew was born moved socially in the upper circle of Suffolk county families. These families played no known part in Gosnold's later adventurings. In fact, it may be said that Bartholomew married above them, into a group which by participation in maritime "merchant adventures" and common trade had become leaders in England's national affairs and builders of the British Empire. Yet, as a part of Bartholomew's early environment, these important personages in county Suffolk must be mentioned.
There were the Wingfields, Several of the grandchildren of Sir Anthony Wingfield, K.G., whose given name was freely used in the Gosnold family, lived in manors in the vicinity of Otley. A. Henry Wingfield, possibly Sir Anthony's grandson, as a token of his familiarity with the Gosnolds, "inscribed" his name on a window-pane in the hall of the manor-house at Otley -- a choice item to be noted by an antiquarian two centuries or so later. To repeat, Bartholomew's aunt, Ursula Gosnold, was a granddaughter of Sir Anthony's and so a cousin to all of the near and distant neighbors belonging to that family.
Aunt Ursula supplies a splendid example of how far family ties could be recognized in Bartholomew's day, a family-feeling difficult to realize in the present day. Ursula was the daughter of Elizabeth Wingfield, five generations down from the first (Mowbray) Duke of Norfolk, and William Naunton. She was an aunt, therefore, not only of Bartholomew and a number of other Gosnolds, through her husband, but also of Naunton nieces and nephews, including the well-known Sir Robert Naunton, a politician who later became Secretary of State. Sir Robert's will, dated long after Bartholomew's death, mentions "cousin" Winifred Gosnold, who was actually no relation at all in a modern sense, but the widow of John Gosnold, son of Sir Robert's aunt Ursula and her husband, Robert (III) Gosnold -- a perspicuous illustration of the acceptance of marriage-relationships.
Then there was the Talmache family of Letheringham, some five miles from Otley, in which the eldest sons for generations were successively named Lionel. That they were friends of the Gosnolds in Bartholomew's day is shown by the scribbled name "Edward Gosnold" in the manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the Talmache library. It seems that this was some childish prank and that the Edward in question was Bartholomew's youngest uncle. Later, his oldest uncle, Robert III, had a row with the Lionel Talmache of 1599 about a meadow in Helmingham (only two miles from Otley and where the scribbled-in manuscript was.) This dispute was settled by the Sir Anthony Wingfield of Letheringham of that generation. And finally, still later, Robert Gosnold (V) inhis day married Ann Talmache, who thus became the sister-in-law of "the younger" Anthony Gosnold of Virginia -- he who refused to go bact to England for the £100 left him by grandfather Robert (III).
The little town of Coddenham, six miles west of Otley, provides more than a little that is of interest to this story. Edmund, a brother of Robert Gosnold the elder, had settled there and acquired, together with his nephew, John Gosnold the Solicitor General, the Manor of Vesseys, otherwise called "the Priory or the 'Manor of Coddenham Vicarage'." Edmund's only son died young and Bartholomew's uncle John, while still very young, removed to Coddenham to take the place of the deceased son. Uncle John was a failure in life and the Manor passed to Edmund's son-in-law, Christopher Ungle, who in turn passed it on to his son, William. In 1580 William Ungle lost it somehow to another member of the family. These Ungles of Coddenham were, of course, cousins in the third or fourth degree of Bartholomew Gosnold. They are mentioned because it seems quite possible that the William Unger ["laborer"] whose name appears among the first lot of Jamestown colonists may in fact have been a William Ungle of Coddenham with his name mis-spelled.
The story about Bartholomew's uncle, John Gosnold of Coddenham, is this. In the days when "the public peace" seemed to require the extermination of Protestants by axe and flame, two young men from Coddenham were employed "in the palace." Somehow these two, presumably John Gosnold and one George Loosen, learned that a fellow servant, Thomas Spurdance, was a Protestant -- conceivably and indiscreet one. They told this to "Mr. Gosnal" -- probably Edmund -- in Coddenham, who seems to have reported it to the ecclesiastical authorities. Not too many years later an account of Spurdance's trial and execution by burning at the stake appeared in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
An early recorder of the Sufflok scene makes this comment: "It was the observations of old men in Coddenham that lived till my time that since Gosnold and Loosen persecuted that martyr Thomas Spurdance (mentioned by Mr. Foxe) their families did never thrive. Loosen sold his whole estate by parcels to severall men, and died full of lice. Mr. Gosnold a great man in estate decayed by little and little and left a very small pittance to his children. His eldest sone Capt. [Robert] Gosnold (whose mother was sister to Mr. Andrew Tinnellmarsh [Kinwellmarsh]) was at one time Governor of Landguard fort [Suffolk] in the time of King Charles."
Our interest in this tale is because of Captain Robert, son of old John Gosnold and a first cousin of Bartholomew. Having no inheritance, Robert turned soldier in time to be involved in the Essex revolt and be thrown into the Marshalsea Prison in 1601. Then, shortly after the accession of King James, when Captain Robert should have progressed under the favor of the new monarch, he go into difficulties again -- difficulties of quite a different sort.
According to one of the papers in the case, Captain Gosnold was "a great commander in the Isle of Wright, in the King's pay." Several depositions about the affair were made by persons concerned with it, and were preserved among the state papers.. But as usual it is somewhat difficult to reconstruct the story from the published abstracts of these affidavits.
The most lucid runs as follows: "Ryche, his wife, and Captain Christopher Levens, being in company with Captain Gosnold, Mr. Bowyer Worsely, and others at Mr. Denyse's, the new book of statutes of the last parliment was called for and Gosnold made trifles of many of them, namely of that against conjurers and against the marriage of two wives. Gosnold also used the following speeches to Ryche's wife: 'He never before had heard any woman speak so well of the King as she had done;' -- the King is a good hunter and he kills bucks, but he is good to does, and he grows weak in the back, his date is almost out;' and 'His back is weak and he is going on his last half year'."
In another deposition, it appears that "Katheren Ryche did rise suddenly from the table saying, 'Marry, God bless the King, I hope he shall live amongst us these forty years,' after which she went discontented to her chamber."
The discounted lady seems to have been rather free with her kisses at this lively party, for her husband, Captain Barnabe Ryche, in still another deposition advances this argument: "She never saw Gosnold before that day or since; yet at divers times when she came out of her chamber to sit down, she entertained both Gosnold and Worsely with each of them a kiss. Heere was then no show of quarrel yet. Now afterward if, finding herself discountented with Gosnold for his traitorous demeanor towards the King, she denied him another kiss for a farewell, in her testimony thereof the worse because she had shown her dutiful affection to her prince?"
Mr. Denyse, the host of the gathering, is reported in one of these depositions as having expressed the opinion that Gosnold was a "counterfeit papist, and ill-affected to the King."
All this was of course serious indeed, and Gosnold was put behind bars, so to speak, for a while. Yet he suffered no permanent hurt, since there is record, five years later, of his appointment to an important military post, the first of several -- the normal promotions of a military officer enjoying the favor of King James. Nevertheless, the affair -- which lasted from September until at least December, 1604 and kept Gosnold under restraint until after July 1, 1606 -- must have geen embarrassing to his cousin Bartholomew, because that was precisely the year and a half or so when Bartholomew was seeking means of approach to the King, that there might be obtained from his Majesty a charter for a company to settle in what is today called Virginia.
The general neighborhood of Coddenham contributes another bit of knowledge of Bartholomew Gosnold's associations of quite a different sort. On the first relief, or supply, ship sent out to Jamestown late in 1607 there went a Matthew Scivener, apparently unannounced and long a "mystery figure" in the narratives of the Jamestown settlement for the reason that he was sent as a new member of the local council, and yet was a very young man. The explanation lies in a Coddenham association; for Ralph Scrivener, Matthew's father, owned three manors there. Obviously young Matthew was a friend of the three Gosnolds who had gone to Virginia in December, 1606, and followed them at the earliest opportunity, recognized as a new leader by the London Council.
Ralph Scrivener, the father, is described as of Ipswich and Belstead, three miles away. In an instrument of 1598 it appears that Robert Gosnold III conceded to Ralph Scrivener and others the right to sell certain properties in Otley. In 1607, Ralph Scrivener died and his propety, including the three Coddenham manors, passed into the ownership of his elder son John. The date of his father's death probably determined shmehow the time of Matthew's departure for Virginia, where he lost his life in the accident which took the life also of Anthony Gosnold, Bartholomew's younger brother, and all the other occupants of a small boat, which apparently capsized across the river from Jamestown in January, 1609.
Here, as on many prededing occasions in the life of Bartholomew Gosnold, Richard Hakluyt enters into the picture. Three years later that reverend geographer bought from John Scrivener the manor of Bridge Place in Coddenham, in partnership with his son Edmund, to be an investment for the latter. As he trod the village street in Coddenham in that year of 1612 Hakluyt's heart must hav ebeen heavy with personal grief for the three young men who had known the place so well and who now lay dead in Virginia -- Bartholomew Gosnold, Anthony Gosnold, and Matthew Scrivener.
in 1599, Robert Golding, Bartholomew's father-in-law, together with another lawyer from Bury St. Edmunds named John Mallowes, bought a quarter-share in another Coddenham namor called the manor of "Deanys." How long he held this is not known, but there is notice of Edward Bacon, of Shrubland Hall, buying the "right" of the same share, and dying in 1618. Since Edward Bacon was knighted in 1603, this indicates that Golding did not hold the property for long. (He was a son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and therefore a kinsman of Bartholomew's mother.)
Probably the most useful of Bartholomew's cousins is John, third son of this uncle Robert (III). John was about three years older than Bartholomew, and presumably the two, along with their brothers, were educated together in the schoolroom of the manor at Otley. It is of course possible that this assumption, along with a resultant friendship between the two, is a mistaken on. Bartholomew may have considered John an insufferable sprig, fit only for a life of servitude at court, and John may have thought of his younger cousin as a boorish fellow better off in foreign parts.
One likes to believe, however, that adolescent companionship and the bond of blood kinship made John Gosnold a friend at court in the days of Bartholomew's need. For John, as a Gentleman Usher in the last years of Elizabeth's and throughout Jame's reign, could have had many an opportunity to put in a good word for Bartholomew and his colonization schemes with the gentlemen and nobles in the royal antechambers. Then, too, John's wife, Winifred Windsor, was a lady of unquestioned distinction -- her mother was a third cousin of Queen Elizabeth and of James V of Scotland, King James's grandfather. Mistress Gosnold, as well as her husband, could and may have done much for Bartholomew's causes.
When we remember that John Gosnold died merely an "esquire" and his wife merely an esquire's wife it is worth stopping to observe the magniloquence with which John's widow described his station in life and her own ancient lineage. For on the monument she erected to his memory in the church at Otley, she gave nearly as much space to her own descent as she did to the virtues of her late husband. This is the only Gosnold monument which escaped the ravages of Puritans when they went through the chruches, destroying every effigy or memorial with "popish" wording in its inscription. So, with honor to John Gosnold and in deference to his widow's wish that all be known, it is printed in full:
Here resteth interred the body of John Gosnold Esqr. 3d sonne of Robert Gosnold of Otley Esqr. and Ursula his Wife, borne of the right antient and worthy families of Naunton and Wingfield of Letheringham. He spent his tender years in good studies at Oxford and his talents were not hidden, his riper years he spent in Court where he served in the place of Gentleman Usher in ordinary the Maies of Q. Elizabeth and K. James 26 yeares and was after a gentleman of the privy chanber in ordinarie to K. Charles.
He married Winifred ye daughter of Walter Windsor Esqr. and son of William Lo: Windsor and of Margarett his Wife daughter of Sr. Geffery Poole Knight, sonne of Sr. Richard Poole Kt. and the Lady Margarett Countesse of Salisbury his Wife, daughter of the right noble Prince George Duke of Clarence Brother to K. Edward the fourth of England, etc.
He departed this Life the 17th of February Anno Dni 1628 aged 60 yeares, who had issue by his said Wife 5 Sonnes and 3 daughters, to whose memory his sadd Wife caused this inscription to be erected.
In accordance with the custom of the time, John Gosnold had paid for this office of Gentleman Usher the round sum of £500, which was advanced by his father, Robert Gosnold (III). John did not make enough out of the job to repay his father, but was forgiven the debt in the latter's will. Besides the cash payment there was of course influence brought to bear to secure the appointment. As no date is available for John's marriage to Winifred, it is a question whether he got the job because of his wife's influence, or whether he got his wife as the result of securing a court appontment. It is quite possible that the marriage was arranged by Lady Dorothy Stafford, a first cousin of Winifred Windsor's mother, and John's place at court was secured at the same time through Lady Stafford's influence. The time has come, therefore, to make an acquaintance with Lady Stafford.
Before proceeding to that pleasant task, however, it should be remarked that King James found John Gosnold a useful person to have around. Although there is little information about this for the first twenty years of James's reign, the surviving records show that on November 10, 1623, King James directed Attorney General Sir Thomas Coventry "to prepare a grant to Mr. Gosnold, the King's servant (and to another deserving gentleman) of the whole benefit of a concealed escheat." Mr. Gosnold, accordingly, was to share in an estate to which the King had title in the absence of legal heirs.
