Edwin Sandys (nobleman)

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Sir Edwin Sandys, mezzotint etching by Valentine Green made in 1776 .

Edwin Sandys (born December 9, 1561 in Worcestershire , † October 1629 in Kent ) was an English politician and one of the founders of the Virginia Company of London , which laid out the first permanent English settlement in the colony of Virginia in North America in 1606/07 . According to him, Sandys Parish , an administrative area of Bermuda , named.

Life

Edwin Sandys was the second son of Edwin Sandys , Archbishop of York, and his wife Cecily Wilford, and a brother of the traveler and poet George Sandys . He attended the Merchant Taylors' School from 1571 and the Corpus Christi College (Oxford) from 1577 . In 1579 he became a Bachelor of Arts and ten years later a Bachelor of Civil Law . In 1582 his father gave him the benefice Wetwang of York Minster , but he was never ordained. In 1589 he was admitted to the Middle Temple Bar . At Oxford he had had Richard Hooker as his teacher, with whom he became a lifelong friend. Sandys is said to have been instrumental in ensuring that Hooker was entrusted with the leadership of Temple Church in London .

From 1593 to 1599, Sandys was on trips abroad on the European continent. In Venice he made friends with Fra Paolo Sarpi , who helped him write a treatise on the religious situation in Europe, the Europae speculum . In 1605 this treatise was printed on the basis of a stolen copy under the title A Relation of the State of Religion in Europe . Sandys managed to get this edition banned, but the book was reprinted in The Hague in 1629 .

In 1599 Sandys renounced his benefice and entered an active political career. As early as October 13, 1586 he had become a member of parliament for the first time, as a representative for Andover ; from 1589 he then sat for Plympton in Parliament. In the years after 1599, in view of the imminent death of Queen Elizabeth I, he courted the Scottish King James VI. After he had ascended the English throne as James I in 1603, Sandys was knighted. He was a member of Stockbridge's first parliament in 1604 and made a name for himself as an opponent of the great monopolies. He also worked hard to ensure that all prisoners should be allowed to seek legal counsel. A number of lawyers opposed acceptance of this proposal because they saw it as a danger to the administration of justice.

Politically, Sandys was in opposition to James I and particularly criticized the king's plans for the unification of England and Scotland. He also drew the enmity of the king by boldly advocating constitutional monarchy and against the doctrine of divine grace .

Sandys was already in contact with the British East India Company before 1614 and participated in its activities until his death. His most memorable service, however, was the Virginia Company of London , which he had joined in 1607 and whose treasurer he was in 1619. He supported the policy which enabled the British colony in North America to survive the initial problems after its establishment. His significant influence on the Virginia Company, which existed especially from 1619, lasted until its dissolution in 1624 by the government of Jacob I.

In the later parliaments of Jacob I, Sandys was a representative for Sandwich in 1621 and Kent in 1624 . He appeared in the session of 1621 against the spread of Catholicism and against the royal minister Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex , whose indictment by the House of Commons he supported in the session of 1624. He was a member of the first parliament of Charles I in 1625 as a representative for Penryn . He died in October 1629 at the age of 67 and was buried in Northbourne Church in Kent with his last wife, Katherine, daughter of Sir Richard Bulkeley .

literature

personal data
SURNAME Sandys, Edwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1561
PLACE OF BIRTH Worcestershire
DATE OF DEATH October 1629
Place of death Kent