As the US celebrates the Founding Fathers and the 250th anniversary of independence, this day event looks at the complex history of the “forgotten founders”: the English and English-backed adventurers who first searched for and settled what became North America.
The first of a series of four seminars explores John Cabot’s voyages in the 1490s to what was the “new found land” and the subsequent (but doomed) efforts to build on his legacy over the next fifty years.
The second seminar investigates why and how interest was revived during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, with leading merchants funding voyages to the supposed Northwest Passage (between the Atlantic and the Pacific) and to what Sir Francis Drake named Nova Albion.
The third seminar examines Roanoke, the first English settlement, which was organized by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1580s. An initial group of Roanoke colonists returned after a year, bringing home remarkable watercolours of Algonquian people by the artist John White that are now in the British Museum. When she posed for the famous “Armada” portrait, Queen Elizabeth I was shown with her right hand resting on a globe, her fingers stretched possessively across the full expanse of North America. But the sense of triumph was brief: a second replacement group were never seen again, and they entered American legend as “the lost colonists”.
The fourth seminar focuses on Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement, which was founded in 1607—13 years before the Pilgrim Fathers sailed to America in the Mayflower. The colonists survived the “starving time”, created a self-sustaining economy, and established what has been hailed as the first freely elected parliament of a self-governing people in the western world. At the same time, they waged war on the Powhatan people, captured Matoaka (Pocahontas) and converted her to Christianity, and received the first enslaved people from Africa.
Please note: this event will close to enrolments at 23:59 BST on 13 May 2026.