Matthew Scrivener

Matthew Scrivener (1580 – January 7, 1609) was an English colonist in Virginia. He served briefly as acting governor of Jamestown, but drowned while attempting to cross to nearby Hog Island in a storm in 1609. Eight other colonists were also drowned, half of them members of the governing Council, including Bartholomew Gosnold's brother Anthony. Scrivener was succeeded by Captain John Smith.

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

Scrivener was the son of barrister and city bailiff Ralph Scrivener of Ipswich and of Belstead, in Suffolk, England. His mother was Mary Dowsing Smith. He arrived on the first supply ship after the colony had been established. Listed as "Matthew Scrivener, gentleman" in early Virginia records, he was a supporter and friend of Captain John Smith. Apparently he was supplanted as governor during his lifetime by his friend Smith, owing to his young age and lack of administrative skills: at the time of his death at the age of 28, Matthew Scrivener was the first secretary for the Colony of Jamestown. His sister was married to the cousin of the first President of Jamestown, Edward Maria Wingfield.[1]

A year after Matthew's death by drowning, his brother John Scrivener in England purchased Sibton Abbey in Suffolk, where Scrivener family descendants still reside today.[2][3]

References

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

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