Christopher Lawne

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lawne

Christopher Lawne was an English merchant and Puritan of note, born in Blandford, Dorset, who emigrated to Virginia Colony on the Marygold in May 1618 and died the following year.

Lawne's Creek, on the south bank of the James in present-day Isle of Wight County, is named for Christopher Lawne, who settled a plantation there with 15-20 Puritan colonists. Lawne sat as a burgess in Governor Yeardley's First General Assembly of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Governor and Council of Virginia in July 1619,[1] Soon thereafter, Lawne fell ill and died that November.[2] His will was witnessed by Nathaniel West (younger brother of Thomas West, Lord De La Warr), and surgeon Pharao Flynton.

Like many English Dissenters, Lawne initially left England for Holland, drawn by the atmosphere 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, where he had published The prophane schisme of the Brownists or Separatists With the impietie, dissensions, lewd, and abhominable vices of that impure sect: Discovered by Christopher Lawne, John Fowler, Clement Saunders, Robert Bulward; lately returned from the Company of Master Johnson, that wicked Brother, into the bosom of the Church of England, their true Mother 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.

http://zeus.as.arizona.edu/~dmccarthy/HillFamily/JILL/C1.html

Bennett and his religious peer, Christopher Lawne, were Elders of the Ancient Church in the Netherlands. Both men led companies of immigrants to establish plantations along the south side of the James River in Virginia in 1618.

To finance these ventures, The Virginia Company of London had been created with a charter issued by King James I in 1609. This profit-making company was organized by the ablest merchants, manufacturers, and statesmen of their time, including Bennett and Lawne. Some of the shareholders associated with the Virginia Company undertaking were leading artisans of London.

The Virginia Company could be called an early "venture capital" firm designed to capitalize on opportunity across the Atlantic in the Colonies. "It provided an agency for assembling adventure capital and supplying able management to enterprises of great moment. It offered an invitation to the industrious to participate in the growing wealth and expanding power of the great English middle class. It supplied an opportunity to small investors and it limited their liability. It was an adaptation by practical people to practical problems."1 Centuries later, these joint enterprises or "charters" as they were called, would be identified as the forerunners of today's business corporations.

"The Gift of God," one of the ships believed to be under charter to Edward Bennett, brought two hundred English citizens to Martin's Hundred in Virginia in 1618. Timothy Clare, the ship's captain, was a Puritan and later became one of the first Quaker converts of record in the Chuckatuck Monthly Meeting held in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, in the middle 1600's.

In that same year Christopher Lawne came with a company of immigrants aboard the "Marygold" and settled at the mouth of a small creek, which emptied into the James River from the south and which came to be known as Lawne's Creek.

http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/isleofwight/court/history.txt

https://sites.google.com/site/atimelineofamerica/1618