Donne be proud

Dr. John Donne, 17th century metaphysical English poet of “Death be not Proud” and “No Man is an Island” fame, was a Virginian.

It’s true.

Born in 1562 into a Catholic family during the Reformation in England, Donne had deep ties to the Catholic faith. His mother was the great-niece of Sir Thomas More, the martyr. He had a Jesuit education as a young boy, and then refused to take the Oath of Supremacy of the Anglican Church required to hold a degree from Oxford and Cambridge, thus gaining him the education of those august institutions but not the diplomas.

In 1614, James I (for whom Jamestown is named) urged the 52-year-old poet and diplomat to join the Church of England. In 1615, he was ordained an Anglican priest-- a Doctor of Divinity-- and made the King’s Chaplain.

By 1621 he was the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Though the records are not clear on just how it came to pass, Donne joined the Virginia Company May 22, 1622 and later that year was appointed to the King’s Council which oversaw all commercial, legal, and religious goings on in Virginia.

In November of that year, Donne delivered a rousing sermon to the Company and the King, presumably at a quarter court session of the membership, but possibly at St. Paul’s. In that sermon, Donne repeatedly called upon the power placed in them by God to go forth and be witnesses of Christ to the uttermost parts of the Earth.

He meant Virginia.

The sermon is partly a parsing of biblical language and the acts of the apostles and partly a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice for all, but mostly it’s a pointed and repeated declaration of the Company’s duty to spread the Anglican gospel in this plantation called Virginia.

And not just to glorify God but to stick it in the eye of all Papists-- here, in England, and in Spain. Nothing, not even “twenty lectures in the matter of Controversie,” vexed Catholics as much as “one ship that goes and strengthens the Plantation.” The Papists “would gladly have it” and so the Company should “be glad to hold it.”

According to the sermon’s dedication, The Company, apparently overcome with the beauty and scope of Donne’s sermon, issued a “commandment” that the chaplain print copies for distribution. Donne specified that these copies would be sold at Thomas Jones’ shop in the Strand, “at the Blacke Raven,” a place that sounds suspiciously like a tavern.

The Virginia Company was dissolved in 1624 by the King; Donne had only two years to be one with the adventurers.

Commercial success in the secular world mixed with religious proselytizing was the backbone of the Virginia Company’s Jamestown Charter. John Donne, supremely cerebral poet of the day, was an adventurer with the Virginia Company—who’d have thought it?

The poet-priest never came to Virginia, that’s certain, but in the dedication of his sermon, Donne was quietly grateful to be counted among those who looked to the New World with eager anticipation for the good to be had: “By your favors I had some place amongst you before, but now I am an Adventurer; if not to Virginia, yet for Virginia.”

That makes him a true Virginian, no matter where he actually hung his alb.

Karla K. Bruno is the author of Mischiefs and Miseries, a novel of Jamestown 1607. She lives, writes, and practices Catholicism in Williamsburg, Virginia. www.kkbruno.com

Published in The Virginian-Pilot October 18, 2009