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)
