For todays's run around Bury St Edmunds part of my route took me through the great grave yard. If you ever visit Bury then this is a place of much interest with interesting inscriptions and of course great history.
In an early post on the 21st of June I mentioned how there were many links between Suffolk and the USA particularly with regard to the early settlers and as a result the many place names in the States which carry a Suffolk place name.
Bartholomew Gosnold was born in 1572 in Grundisburgh Suffolk, His ancestral home was Otley Hall in the heart of rural Suffolk.
It was in Bury St Edmunds that Gosnold made his home and his children are recorded in the parish register of St James Church
Gosnold graduated from Cambridge University where he studied law and in his short life of just 36 years he is considered to be the founder of the Virginnia Company of London and of Jamestown in Virginnia.
The Virginnia Company of London was established under royal charter during the reign of James the 1st with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.
Gosnold died of dysentery and scurvy just months after landing at Jamestown. Two thirds of the 104 colonists who landed at Jamestown were dead within months. However without this expeditation and colonisation it is said that North Americans would now be speaking Spanish as their principal language!
Gosnold led the first recorded European expeditation of Cape Cod in 1602. During this voyage he named ‘Martha’s Vineyard’ after his infant daughter who had died a few years earlier. Martha was baptised in St Edmundsbury Cathedral (then the church of St James) and is buried in an unmarked grave in the great churchyard.
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