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• 29 Dec 1940
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• US connections
Virginia Dare
Bust of Virgina Dare

 

Edward Winslow
Edward Winslow
1595 - 1655

 

Sir William Staines
Sir William Staines repaired the damaged steeple for £3000		  

American Connections

As the home of printing, St Bride's position has always been an international one. However, its connections with America are particularly strong. On 18th August 1585 the first American child of English descent was baptised Virginia Dare. She was the daughter of Elenor and Ananias who were formerly parishoners of St Bride's and were married in the church. A bust of Virginia stands above the font.

On 4th November 1594 Edward Winslow, saltmaker of Droitwich, married Magdalen Ollyver in St Bride's. Their son, Edward, was born in 1595 and after schooling in Worcester he accompanied his father on trips to deliver sheepskins to printers and binders in and around Fleet Street. The register of The Worshipful Company of Stationers records his apprenticeship to John Beale and the young Edward worshipped at St. Bride's. Eventually he became one of the leading Pilgrim Fathers, setting sail on The Mayflower in September 1620.

Edward Winslow went on to hold the office of Governor of Plymouth, Massachusetts three times. He was also known as "America's first ambassador" as he returned to England several times on behalf of the colony. On one such visit he was flung into Fleet Prison on bogus charges of dubious church teaching for seventeen weeks. Subsequently, Oliver Cromwell made him Chief Commissioner of the 1655 naval expedition to the Carribbean. He died of fever during the capture of Jamaica that same year; one of the ships chroniclers wrote:

The Eighth of May, west from 'Spaniola shore,
God took from us our Grand Commissioner,
Winslow by Name, a man in Chiefest Trust,
Whose Life was sweet, and Conversation just;
Whose Parts and wisdome most men did excell:
An honour to his Place, as all can tell.

The great oak reredos which was crafted when St Bride's was restored after the war is a memorial to Winslow and the Pilgrim Fathers.

In 1619 the governors of Bridewell Hospital were asked to send one hundred boys and girls "to help populate Virginia". They proved so successful that another hundred were sent off three years later. On coming of age they were awarded grants of land and many became citizens of standing.

One particular course of events centred on St Bride's played no small part in worsening relations between Britain and its transatlantic colony which eventually culminated in the War of Independence. On 18th June 1764 lighting struck the steeple of St Bride's and destroyed eight feet of it. A Royal Soceity committee was appointed to decide upon the best method of safeguarding buildings, particularly whether pointed lightning rods, invented by Benjamin Franklin, should be used. Unfortunately, Franklin was seen as the wicked spokesman of disaffected American colonists and George III insisted that blunt knobs were better than pointed ends. When the President of the Royal Society pleaded that "I cannot reverse the laws of nature", the King replied "Then you are not fit to be President!". Franklin eventually gave up on England and returned to America.