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cene Three
    1616 PANEL


Leaving Plymouth, the Treasurer sails up the English Cannel, enters the Thames Estuary and makes her way slowly up the crowded river to Greenwich, then London itself. Soon Pocahontas and her attendants wow the Virginia Company and make an even more sensational entrance into Court life than even Dale could hope for.

One or two Indians had been kidnapped before, brought to England and trained to be guides, then sent back to Virginia. Here, however, is the first real live Princess to set foot in London of her own free will, King James is mightily impressed and treats her like a fellow royal but his attitude towards her husband is quite different at first. Rolfe has done the almost unpardonable act for a lowly commoner by marrying into royalty without his monarch’s permission. His Majesty’s anger is assuaged however when Dale diplomatically points out that not only  has the wedding brought about a period of peace with Powhatan but  with it tribes such as the Chickahominy have now accepted James as their sovereign and are now his first native subjects in North America. It would not go down well with them therefore if Powhatan’s son-in-law were to lose his head over the matter. Rolfe is pardoned but James never forgives him for peddling tobacco in England. He loathes the weed.

Everyone who is anyone now wants to meet or entertain the Rolfes.

These include the Bishop of London John King who throws a banquet for them. He also preaches a sermon about Pocahontas in St Paul’s Cathedral. The rich, the famous and the nobility, vying with one another, fall over themselves to offer hospitality or get a glimpse of her  at the Bell Inn where the couple are lodging. The curious, with their retinues, if they live south of the Thames, have to cross the capital’s one bridge, London Bridge, to do so. The young bucks don’t bother  with invitations or appointments but simply and boorishly turn up at the  inn, demanding an audience with the Virginian Woman. For her part, Pocahontas gets sick of the publicity and the noisy, crowded, narrow, polluted, stinking London streets which are ankle deep in horse manure, mud and rubbish. She begs Rolfe for a holiday in the country.

The butterfly is the female Small Copper (Lycaena phlaeus)



 

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GREAT BURNET  Sanguisorba officinalis.  Good against wounds, as identified with the vulnerary plant mentioned by  Dioscorides

WATER RAGWORT  Senecio aquaticus.  ‘ It is much commended and not without cause, to help old aches and pains in the armes, hips and legs.’ Gerard

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