Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 1.djvu/43

 old associate, Sir Thomas Gates, died in the same service the next year. Copeland on the Royal James went to Java. Leaving Java in February, 1621, the ship slowly returned to England, and Copeland having become interested in Virginia by conversing with Dale and Gates, collected on the homeward voyage from his fellow passengers the sum of £70, to be employed for the use of a church or school in Virginia. This sum, when he arrived in London, he delivered to the authorities of the Virginia Company, who made him a free member. They decided that there was more need of a school than a church, and designed the money, increased to £100 by a gift of £30 from another source, for the establishment of a free school at Charles City, now City Point, which should hold a due dependence on the proposed university at Henrico and be called the "East India School," after its East India benefactors. In recognition of his zeal for the colony and his experience as a missionary, the company on July 3, 1622, appointed Mr. Copeland rector of the intended college for the Indians, a part of the university, as well as a member of the council for Virginia.

On Wednesday, April 17, 1622, Copeland, at the invitation of the London Company, preached a thanksgiving sermon in London for the happy success of affairs in Virginia the previous year. But about the middle of July it was learned from Capt. Daniel Gookin, who came from Newport News, that on Good Friday, March 22, the Indians, whose children were so largely in the proposed scheme of instruction, had risen and barbarously destroyed George Thorpe, the noble superintendent in charge of the college lands, and 346 more of the unsuspecting settlers. The university, college and free school were all three abandoned, and Copeland did not go to Virginia, He afterwards went to the Bermuda Islands, where he was living in 1638 and later. About 1645 he left the Bermudas and went to a small island in the Bahama group, to form a Puritan church which should have no connection with the state. The isle, which was called "Eluthera," proved a dreary place, and friends of the religion in Boston were obliged to send the settlers supplies, and in 1631 many of them returned to Bermuda, where Copeland, then more than four score years of age, must soon, have died.

Sackvill, Sir Edward, Earl of Dorset, born in 1590, educated at Christ Church, Oxford, 1605-09; made a knight of the Bath, November 3, 1618; commanded troops sent to the Elector Palatine, and fought at Prague in 1620; member of parliament; sent on an embassy to France; member of the privy council. He was an active member of the Virginia Company, and took sides with Southampton and Sandys in the factions from 1620 to 1625. After his brother Richard's death in March, 1624, he succeeded him as fourth Earl of Dorset. He was on the commission of 1631 for the management of Virginia affairs, and constantly tried to influence Charles to reestablish the Virginia Company of London. He was a distinguished cavalier in the civil war, and died at WithyhamWithiam [sic], Sussex, July 27, 1625.

Purchas, Rev. Samuel, a divine known as an early collector of voyages and travels, born in 1574, at Thaxted in Essex, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge; he was curate of Purleigh, in Essex, the parish of which Rev. Lawrence Washington was rector, 1633-43. He was afterwards vicar of Eastwood in Essex, 1604-13. In 1614 he was collated to the rectory of St. Martin's Ludgate, London,