Historians are re-evaluating the role of religion in the first permanent English settlement in America after discovering the remains of four of its early leaders buried alongside a sacred Catholic relic.
In what has been described as an “extraordinary” find graves were located under what was the floor of America’s first Protestant church in Jamestown, Virginia, where Pocahontas famously married the English colonist John Rolfe.
The men in the graves had perished in the three years after Jamestown was established in 1607.
They included Rev Robert Hunt, Jamestown’s first Anglican minister, Sir Ferdinando Wainman, the first English knight buried in America, and Captain William West, who was killed by Indians.
But most intriguing was the grave of Captain Gabriel Archer, who died during the “starving time” when colonists were reduced to eating rats, and even cannibalism.
On top of his white oak coffin was a small silver, hexagonal box, marked with the letter M, which historians were surprised to discover in Protestant Jamestown.
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