He's a Minion -- maybe

Today we switch back to Sharon's side of the family to look at an ancestor whose son called him the "English Columbus," probably an inflated claim. Still it's nice to know an offspring would want to apparently try to make a spot in history for his father. And he provides a nice jumping off point into history.

Sir Armagil William Wade, or Waad as he appears in historical documents was born in 1511 in Kilnsey, a small village in North Yorkshire, England, not too far from Scotland by modern standards. He is Sharon's 11th great grandfather. 

Sir Armagil would have a distinguished career in government, serving during the reigns of Henry VIII and Queen Mary. Much of what we know about him seems to come from his entry in The History of Parliament,  a multivolume work that covers most of the period from the late 14th century through the early 19th century. A gap appears from 1421-1509. 

Someone had posted Sir Armagil's bio on the Family Search site, and as I scoured around the Internet to find additional information, I found that other listings seem to rely heavily on his information in The History of Parliament. 

He attended Magdalen College and apparently became a barrister. The English have these institutions called "inns of court," which seem to function in much the same way as bar associations do over here. They only have four inns of court, and his name is attached to Gray's Inn.

His bio states that he grew up on the Holderness Peninsula, which more than 100 miles from his birthplace, but it doesn't indicate how he came to be there. The bio speculates that Sir Armagil may have developed a love of the sea while living there that led him to join a voyage of exploration organized under Richard Hore. 

The expedition comprised two ships, a crew of 90, and 30 gentlemen interested in adventure, including Sir Armagill. Most of what we know about the expedition comes from a book written well after the fact by Richard Hakluyt  that relied on an account given the author by one of the adventurers, who is described as "very old" at the time of the interview, and a second account given by one of the adventurers to the Hakluyt's brother. Some disputes have arisen of over the accuracy the accounts. Still, it's a rollicking good yarn. 

The two boats, Trinity and Minion, sailed from Gravesend, England in 1536. Sir Armitage and the man who spoke with Hakluyt's brother are supposed to have sailed on the Minion. No word on whether the ship or any of its occupants were yellow. (I know, I know.) The name of the ship has been disputed, with some scholars contending that Hakluyt was wrong, and the second ship was named William.

After two months the ships landed at Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where they were met by indigenous people who had the sense to flee. For a short time, the members of the expedition lived off birds and bears. But they ran out of other supplies and eventually game became scarce. In addition, one of the ships developed problems that rendered it less than seaworthy.

This is where the story turns weird. According to Hakluyt's reporting, one of the crew "killed his mate while he stouped to take up a roote for his reliefe, and cutting out pieces of his body who he had murthered, broyled the same on the coles and greedily devoured them." 

Apparently others had engaged in similar acts and claimed the missing crewmen had been attacked by natives or wild animals. Eventually one crewman admitted killing a mate and having the man's backside for a meal. I was going to use a punny title for this post that would have referenced the incident but decided that would be insensitive, even for me. 

This account is also disputed. If Hore's second ship really was the William,  then the story could well have been a mistaken memory from a seaman who'd heard a similar story about cannibalism aboard a ship named Minion that actually sailed in the Gulf of Mexico a couple of decades after Hore's expedition.

I'm not sure what happened to which ship, but it seems the Minion, was the dilapidated ship. A French ship showed up just before the crew was about to decide as a whole to get over their revulsion about cannibalism and sacrifice a crewman for the benefit of the remaining crew. 

They managed to overcome the French sailors and sailed off in the well provisioned French ship and returned to England. The French sailors managed to cobble together enough repairs to the abandoned English ship to sail to England shortly after, barely surviving the trip. The promptly     complained to the king, who took pity on the expedition members and paid restitution himself.

Sir Armagil's son claimed his father had written an account of the voyage, but no copy of such a work survives. This may have been why he referred to his father as the English Columbus, but that title, were it to exist, would rightly belong to John Cabot, an Italian captain sailing for the English, who landed in Newfoundland in 1497

Hakluyt's book is freely available on Google Books.

Image: A possible drawing of  Sir Armagil Waad