Christopher Lawne was an English merchant and

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...

of note, who was among the earliest settlers in the Virginia Colony in the early 17th century. Born in Blandford, Dorset, he emigrated on the ''Marygold'' in May 1618 and died in Virginia the following year. Lawne's Creek, on the south bank of the

James James is a common English language surname and given name: *James (name), the typically masculine first name James * James (surname), various people with the last name James James or James City may also refer to: People * King James (disambiguat ...

in present-day

Isle of Wight County Isle of Wight County is a county located in the Hampton Roads region of the U.S. state of Virginia. It was named after the Isle of Wight, England, south of the Solent, from where many of its early colonists had come. As of the 2020 census, th ...

, is named for Christopher Lawne. He established a plantation there with 15-20 other Puritan colonists. Lawne sat as a burgess in Governor Yeardley's First General Assembly of the

Virginia House of Burgesses The House of Burgesses was the elected representative element of the Virginia General Assembly, the legislative body of the Colony of Virginia. With the creation of the House of Burgesses in 1642, the General Assembly, which had been established ...

, Governor and Council of Virginia in July 1619, Soon thereafter, Lawne fell ill and died that November.Boddie, p. 26-28 His will was witnessed by Nathaniel West (younger brother of Thomas West, Lord De La Warr), and surgeon Pharao Flynton. Like many

English Dissenters English Dissenters or English Separatists were Protestant Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 17th and 18th centuries. A dissenter (from the Latin ''dissentire'', "to disagree") is one who disagrees in opinion, belief and ...

, Lawne initially left England for the Netherlands, drawn by its greater religious tolerance. He was an Elder among the Ancient Brethren of Francis Johnson's church. However, he eventually grew disenchanted with the often-fractious sect, and eventually returned to London. There he had published ' in 1612 and ''Brownism turned the inside outward: Being a Parallel between the Profession and the Practice of the Brownists' religion. By Christopher Lawne, lately returned from that wicked Separation'' London, 1613. He may have been influenced in his writings by the Rev. John Paget of Nantwich, Cheshire, first minister of the English Reformed Church in Amsterdam.

External links

Christopher Lawne and the Isle of Wight PlantationEnglish Puritans in Holland

References

*Arber, Edward. ''The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, 1606-1623 A.D.: As Told by Themselves, Their Friends, and Their Enemies'' London: Ward and Downey, 1897. *Boddie, John Bennett. ''Seventeenth Century Isle of Wight County, Virginia; A History of the County of Isle of Wight, Virginia, During the Seventeenth Century, Including Abstracts of the County Records'' Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co, 1973. *Sprunger, Keith L. ''Dutch Puritanism A History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries'' Studies in the history of Christian thought, v. 31. Leiden: Brill, 1982. *Sprunger, Keith L. ''Trumpets from the Tower: English Puritan Printing in the Netherlands 1600-1640'' E.J. Brill Leiden Boston 1994. *Stanard, William G. and Mary Newton Stanard
''The Virginia Colonial Register''
Albany, NY: Joel Munsell's Sons Publishers, 1902. , Retrieved July 15, 2011. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lawne, Christopher 1619 deaths English emigrants English separatists Virginia colonial people House of Burgesses members American planters Year of birth unknown People from Blandford Forum People from Isle of Wight County, Virginia