Matthew Scrivener

Jamestown, Virginia, Matthew Scrivener, third colonial governor, drowned 1609

Matthew Scrivener (died January 7, 1609) was an English colonist in Virginia. He served briefly as acting governor of Jamestown, when he was succeeded by Captain John Smith. Scrivener drowned with eight other colonists, half of them members of the governing Council, including Bartholomew Gosnold's brother Anthony, while attempting to cross to nearby Hog Island in a storm in 1609.

Scrivener was the son of barrister and city bailiff Ralph Scrivener of Ipswich and of Belstead, in Suffolk, England. (A year after Matthew's death by drowning, his brother John Scrivener purchased Sibton Abbey in Suffolk, where Scrivener family descendants still reside today.^[1][2]) Matthew Scrivener's sister was married to the cousin of the first President of Jamestown, Edward Maria Wingfield.^[3]

Scrivener, listed as "Matthew Scrivener, gentleman" in early Virginia records, was a supporter and friend of Captain John Smith. Scrivener arrived on the first supply ship after the colony had been established. Apparently he was supplanted as governor by his friend Smith, due to his lack of administrative skills.

References

1. ^ Digital Image Archive of Medievals Music, Sibton Abbey Account Book, Saxmundham, private collection of J. E. Levett-Scrivener
2. ^ Bernard Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain (London, 1863)
3. ^ Augustine Page, Joshua Page, A supplement to The Suffolk Traveller (Ipswich, 1844), p. 595

External links

• The Second Charter of Virginia, May 23, 1609 (names Matthew Screvener, Gent.), The Avalon Project, Yale Law School Library

Further reading

• Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America, Giles Milton, Macmillan, New York, 2001

Government offices
Preceded by John Ratcliffe	Colonial Governor of Virginia 1608–1609	Succeeded by John Smith

Persondata
Name	Scrivener
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Date of death	January 7, 1609
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