SEVENTEENTH GENERATION

113262. The Most Reverend Edwin Sandys Archbishop of York⁽¹¹⁴⁾⁽³³⁶⁾ was born about 1516 in probably Hawkshead, Furness Fells, Lancashire. He died in 1588. The Most Reverend Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, was probably educated at Furness Abbey, where the martyr John Bland is said to have been one of his teachers. He afterwards went to St. John's College at Cambridge, receiving an A.B. in 1539, and M.A. in 1541, a B.D. in 1547, and a D.D. in 1549.

He held a number of minor ecclesiastical offices, becoming canon of Peterborough in 1549. He also served as Master of Catherine Hall from 1547. In 1553 he was Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University and when the Duke of Northumberland came to Cambridge to gain support for denying the throne to the Catholic Mary Tudor, Sandys preached a sermon before him, upholding the claims of Lady Jane Grey to the throne. The movement quickly collapsed, and Northumberland ordered Sandys to proclaim Queen Mary, which he did in the marketplace. (At the same time, he made the safe prophecy that Northumberland would not go unpunished; he didn't: he was beheaded.)

Sandys resigned as vice chancellor and was brought to London, where he was imprisoned in the Tower and later Marshalsea prison, from which he managed with the help of Sir Thomas Holcraft to escape and make his way to the continent. He lived abroad, until the end of Queen Mary's reign in 1558, and his first wife and his son died in that exile.

Edwin Sandys returned to England shortly after Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne and quickly received preferment. He was named to several commissions dealing with the liturgy and other ecclesiastical matters. On an ecclesiastical visitation of the North of England, he preached a sermon on Queen Elizabeth that was highly flattering and he was offered the see of Carlisle. He refused it, however, and was rewarded with Worcester instead.

Sandys was a quarrelsome man, often involved in squabbles both high and low, and one contemporary author described his "Germanical nature." The Dictionary of National Biography describes him as "an obstinate and conscientious puritan."

His learning, however, was not in doubt. In 1567 he was one of the translators of the so-called Bishop's Bible. In 1570 he was transferred to the See of London. In 1572 he helped in another translation of the Bible and was responsible for the Books of Hosea, Joel, and Amos through Malachi.

On Mar 8 1576, Sandys was translated to the Archbishopric of York. There, again, his quarrels were many in a time of gathering religious disputes. He died on Jul 10 1588 and was buried in Southwell Minster, where his tomb is still to be found. He endowed a grammar school in his native Hawkswood.

His biography is in the Dictionary of National Biography. He was married to Cecily Wilford in 1560.

113263. Cecily Wilford⁽¹¹⁴⁾ was born about 1536. She died in 1611. Children were:

i. Sir Samuel Sandys⁽⁶¹⁴⁾ was born on Dec 28 1560. He died on Aug 18 1623.
ii. Sir Edwin Sandys⁽⁶¹⁵⁾⁽³³⁶⁾⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ was born on Dec 9 1561. He died in Oct 1629. Sir Edwin Sandys is a highly significant figure in the history of both Britain and, although he never came here, of America as well.

Sandys was born in Worcestershire and studied at the Merchant Taylors' School and then Corpus Christi College, Oxford, matriculating in 1577. At Corpus Christi he earned a B.A., M.A., and, B.C.L. degrees. In 1589 he was admitted as a student at the Middle Temple.

At Corpus Christi, he studied under the Reverend Richard Hooker, the noted theologian and close friend of Archbishop Sandys. Sandys gave Hooker much help and advice on his great work, Ecclesiastical Polity.

Sandys entered Parliament in 1589. In 1593 he and his friend George Cranmer began a three- year-long tour of Europe. He stayed abroad after Cranmer returned to England and wrote his Europae Speculum, an examination of the various religious creeds of the western world. Published without the author's authorization in 1605 as A Relation of the State of Religion, Sandys was able to have it suppressed. With his approval, it was published in The Hague in 1629, and subsequently went into many editions and was widely translated. For an age of deep religious divisions, it was a very tolerant work.

Sandys returned to England in 1599 and in 1603, on the death of Queen Elizabeth I, he journeyed to Scotland and accompanied King James I on his progress to London. He was knighted by the King at Charterhouse on May 11, 1603. Elected to James's first Parliament, he had a leadership position in it from the start. Politically, Sandys was consistently what today we would call a reformer. He advocated the abolition of many obsolete feudal obligations and privileges, and the ending of the trading monopolies of the great trading companies. In 1608 he advocated extending the right of counsel to all prisoners and that same year convinced Parliament to keep and publish regular journals of its proceedings.

In 1614, he delivered a speech in Parliament that cost him the friendship of King James, but proved over the ensuing decades to be one of he most influential ever made, for the ideas echo to this day in both the British and American Constitutions. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, "he maintained that the origin of every monarchy lay in election; that the people gave its consent to the king's authority upon the express understanding that there were certain reciprocal conditions which neither king nor people might violate with impunity; and that a King who pretended to rule by any other title, such as that of conquest, might be dethroned whenever there was force sufficient to overthrow him."

After the dissolution of this Parliament, Sandys turned his attention to colonial affairs, where he made equally significant contributions. He was a member of the East India Company, serving on its governing committee from 1619 to 1623 and again from 1625 to 1629, and the Somers Islands Company. But his chief efforts were devoted to the Virginia Company. He had been appointed a member of the Council of Virginia in 1607, the year the colony was established and in 1617 was chosen to assist the treasurer, Sir Thomas Symthe, in the management of the company.

He was the principle force behind the granting of a patent to the Pilgrims, allowing them to establish a colony in northern Virginia, which then included New England. In 1619 he was elected to the Treasurership of the Virginia Company, the chief executive position. He immediately began a thorough examination of the company's affairs that resulted in numerous reforms in the finances and governance of the company and the colony in the New World that was still, twelve years after its founding, on shaky ground. A new governor was sent out to Virginia and, acting on the company's instructions, largely the work of Sandys, he summoned an assembly of Burgesses, modeled on the English House of Commons. The Virginia House of Burgesses was the first representative assembly in the Western Hemisphere. Sandys also secured a monopoly for Virginia tobacco in England, assuring the colony's economic success.

Sandys would have been reelected to the treasurership of the Virginia Company overwhelmingly, but King James sent the company a message forbidding it to elect Sandys and telling it to select from among four names he submitted. The company remonstrated with the king, but he declared that it was "a seminary of seditious parliament, and that Sandys was his greatest enemy." He concluded by telling the Virginia Company, "Choose the devil if you will, but not Sir Edwin Sandys."

On Jun 16 1621, the King had Sandys imprisoned in the Tower, but Parliament raised such an uproar that he soon released him to house arrest. The King took the government of Virginia into his own hands in 1623, and Sandys thereafter devoted most of his energies to the East India Company, although he served in Parliament for most of the rest of his life.

He is buried in Northbourne Church. There is a monument there to him, but no inscription. A remarkable figure, he richly deserves one.

iii. Sir Myles Sandys , Bart.⁽⁶¹⁶⁾ was born on Mar 29 1563. He died in 1644.
iv. William Sandys⁽⁶¹⁷⁾ was born on Sep 13 1565. He died young.
v. Margaret Sandys⁽⁶¹⁸⁾ was born on Dec 22 1566.
vi. Thomas Sandys⁽⁶¹⁹⁾ was born on Dec 3 1568.
56631 vii. Anne Sandys.
viii. George Sandys⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ was born on Mar 2 1578 in near York, Yorkshire. He died before Mar 7 1644 in Boxley Abbey, Kent. George Sandys studied at St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, and in 1610 set out on a journey that would take him to France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Cyprus, and the Holy Land, a remarkably ambitious tour for that time. In 1615 he published The relation of a Journey begun An. Dom. 1610, a book that enjoyed much success.

In 1621 he was appointed colonial treasurer of the colony of Virginia and accompanied Sir Francis Wyatt, the new governor, to the colony. he remained in Virginia until at least 1631. While in Virginia he completed his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the first English poetry written in America.

Back in England he wrote several other books of poetry, including paraphrases of the psalms, and a translation of Grotius's Christ's Passion.

There is an article on George Sandys in the Dictionary of National Biography.

Home Return to Table of Contents