Edward Maria Wingfield

Edward Maria Wingfield, sometimes hyphenated as Edward-Maria Wingfield, (1550, Stonely Priory, near Kimbolton – 1631). He was the grandson of Richard Wingfield and son of Thomas Maria Wingfield.

Captain John Smith wrote that in 1602-1603 Wingfield was one of the early and prime movers and organisers in "showing great charge and industry" in getting the Virginia Venture moving: he was one of the four incorporators for the London Virginia Company in the Virginia Charter of 1606 and one of its biggest financial backers. He recruited (with his cousin, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold) about forty of the 105 would-be colonists, and was the only shareholder to sail. In the first election in the New World, he was elected by his peers as the President of the governing council for one year beginning May 13, 1607, of what became the first successful, English-speaking colony in the New World at Jamestown, Virginia. He chose the site, a strong defensive position against land or canoe attack, and supervised the construction of the fort in a month and a day, a mammoth task.

After four months, on September 10, because "he ever held the men to working, watching and warding", and because of lack of food, death from disease and attack by the "naturals" (during the worst famine and drought for 800 years), Wingfield was made a scapegoat and was deposed on petty charges. On the return of the Supply Boat on April 10, 1608, Wingfield was sent back to London to answer the charge of being an atheist, and one suspected of having Spanish sympathies. Smith's prime biographer, Philip L. Barbour, however, wrote of the "superlative pettiness of the charges... none of the accusations amounting to anything." Wingfield cleared his reputation, was named in the Second Virginia Charter, 1609, and was active in the Virginia Company until 1620, when he was aged seventy.

He died in 1631 at the age of 81 and was buried on April 13 at St Andrew's parish church, Kimbolton, just ten weeks before John Smith. Wingfield played a crucial role in 1605-08; his extensive contacts (so often used to denigrate him as an aristocratic hack) and his steady input, greatly benefited the colony.