Hunger and hostile Indians were not
the only troubles at Jamestown in those early months of settlement:
Councilor George Kendall was tried
and executed for “a mutiny.” (Suspicions that Kendall was a spy for Spain may
have had something to do with it.)
One of the boys ran away to the
Indians.
A young man in his late teens or
early twenties died of a gunshot wound to his leg. Who shot him, and why? No
one knows. His name was not recorded, and neither was the date of his death,
but his grave has recently been discovered. So far the skeletal remains in it are
known only as JR [Jamestown Recovery] 102C.
On September 10, 1607, Edward Wingfield,
who had been plotting to sail for England, was deposed as president. John
Ratcliffe, one of Smith’s enemies, was elected president John Ratcliffe, the
councilor who became president, is another Jamestown mystery. His English
background is unknown. He invested £50 in the Virginia Company, and when he was
in Virginia he called himself Ratcliffe. But sometimes he used the name
Sicklemore. George Kendall, before
he was executed and hoping to save himself, declared that Ratcliffe’s real name
was Sicklemore, not Ratcliffe, and thus as President Ratcliffe he could not
pronounce the sentence of execution. But Ratcliffe did, and Kendall died. John
Smith described Ratcliffe as “now called Sicklemore, a poor counterfeited
imposture.”
That may have been because
Ratcliffe and others tried to hang Smith a few months later.
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