Gabriel Archer, now a “person of interest” whose grave was discovered
in recent Jamestown excavations, was always a thorn in John Smith’s side--for
reasons unknown. In January 1608 Archer, then a member of the Virginia Company
Council, tried to have Smith executed for causing the deaths of two men who had
been killed by Indians on Smith’s recent expedition upriver. John Robinson died
with “20 or 30 arrows in him.” Thomas Emry simply disappeared. Archer, “indicted
him [Smith] upon a chapter in Leviticus for the death of his two men.” The Old
Testament book of Leviticus, contains the famous “eye for eye, tooth for tooth”
passage that ends “just as he has injured a man, so it shall be inflicted upon
him.” (Leviticus, 20:24.) For an account of this incident see Edward Maria
Wingfield, “A Discourse of Virginia,” in Jamestown
Narratives, Edward Wright Haile, ed., (1998), p. 196, and Virginia
Bernhard, A Tale of Two Colonies: What
Really Happened in Virginia and Bermuda? (2011), pp. 42-43.
Did
Archer have a Bible handy in the wilds of Virginia in 1608? Or was he so well versed in Scripture he could cite chapter and
verse as needed? (The Geneva Bible of 1560 was the standard English one, and
the first one with numbered verses.) Just how religious was Archer, who, it
appears, was buried in 1610 with a Catholic reliquary in his grave?
Smith
was saved by a stroke of luck: On the very day of his trial, who should arrive
but Captain Christopher Newport with supplies and a hundred new colonists? In
the excitement, Smith’s alleged crime was apparently cancelled. But Archer’s
vendetta against John Smith was not.
None
of the extant sources say what Archer had against Smith. Gabriel Archer
(1575-1610), educated at Cambridge and Gray's Inn, and John Smith (1580-1631), a
grammar school dropout, were nearly the same age, but of vastly different
backgrounds. Something set them against each other. Four centuries later, we
are still looking for answers.
No comments:
Post a Comment