Timeline
Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629
Date Events
1561 Edwin Sandys, (second son) born 9th December, Worcestershire. His father was Edwin Sandys (1516? - 1588) who at the time was Bishop of Worcester (1559 - 1570), later Bishop of London (1570 - 1576/7) and Archbishop of York (1576/7 - 88).
1571 Entered Merchant Taylors' School, London.
1577 At Corpus Christi College, Oxford, together with his brother Samuel and his friend George Cranmer - all three matriculated in 1577.
1579 Edwin spent a total of thirteen years at Oxford - B.A. at Oxford at the age of seventeen. Later he was elected as a fellow of Corpus Christi College early in 1580 and M.A. on 5 July 1583, on 23 April 1589 for unknown reasons he failed to obtain a bachelor of law degree, although later he did spend five years at an Inn of Court, but he never practiced the profession.
1580s Married Margaret Eveleigh from Devon sometime in the mid-1580s, the first of four marriages. The couple had one child Elizabeth (or Margaret), born about 1585, who later married her own second cousin, Sir Thomas Wilford of Kent.
1581/2 March 17th - 1581/82 his father presented him the prebend of Wetwang in York Cathedral.
1586 October 13th - Enters parliament, MP for Andover (although it may have been his cousin, also called Edwin) Parliament dissolved in 1593.
1588  July - Edwin's first wife Margaret died in childbirth.
1588 Between 1588 and 1590, along with his manservant, he stayed in London at the house of John Churchman, a master at the Merchant Taylors' Company.
1588   July 10th - Edwin's father died.
1589 Elected MP for Plympton, Devon.
1590 Entered the Middle Temple, London, and probably lived at the Inn of Court.
1590s Edwin married his second wife, Anne Southcote of Devon, a cousin of his first wife, probably married in 1590 or 1591. They were said to have lived for a year in London at the John Churchman's house along with two menservants and a maidservant. Afterwards they went to Yorkshire where Anne died. He then returns to London and again stays with the Churchmans for more than a year.
1593 Edwin and his Uncle Miles, who was also an MP, lease York House on the Strand, London.
1593 In the new year of 1593 Edwin made an arrangement with the printer John Windet, to print 1,200 copies of Richard Hooker's book, The Laws of the Ecclesiastical Polity. Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer had taken an active role in the preparation of the book, which Hooker started writing around 1589.
1593 Elected MP for Plympton, Devon. March 13th - First recorded speech in parliament. Parliament dissolved.
1595 He resumes living in the Middle Temple.
1596 About 1596 Edwin travels the continent (visiting France, Italy, and Germany) with George Cranmer for three years. (The exact date of departure is uncertain some references state it to be 1593).
1599 By April, while in Paris, he had written A Relation of the State of Religion  (see 1605).
1600 November 2nd - His old Oxford tutor and close friend, the theologian Richard Hooker (1554?-1600) died and buried at Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, aged 46.
1601 August - His close friend George Cranmer was killed on a military campaign in Ireland, aged 37. He had received a commission and gone to Ireland in 1600 as secretary to Lord Governor Mountjoy. He died in a skirmish with the Earl of Tyrone's forces, on the way to the decisive battle of Kinsale - Christmas Eve 1601.
1601 Bestowed the manor of Bishops Enbrooke near Folkestone.
c.1601 Married third wife, Elizabeth Nevinson from Eastry. It seems they were only married for a few years before Elizabeth died. They had a daughter, Anne, who married Thomas Engeham from the nearby parish of Goodnestone.
1603 Death of Queen Elizabeth I and accession of James I.
1603 May 11th - Knighted at Charter House on the outskirts of London.
1603/4 March 12th - James I's first parliament. Edwin was reelected to parliament, MP for Stockbridge, Hampshire.
1605 Sir Edwin married his fourth wife Katherine (daughter of Sir Richard Bulkeley of Anglesey). In the next two decades they had twelve children.
1605 June - A Relation of the State of Religion published, the full title is: A Relation of the State of Religion and With What Hopes and Policies it Hath Been Framed, and is Maintained, in the Several States of These Western Parts of the World. In 1605 the Court of High Commission ordered all copies to be burnt, for reasons which may be different from those stated at the time, although it was reprinted again in 1629. It became a widely read book for about sixty years encompassing fourteen editions and four languages.
1605 November 4th - Guy Fawkes arrested attempting to blow up parliament. Sir Edwin was in parliament at the intended time of the explosion on November 5th.
1606 April 10th - James I issues a charter to the Virginia Company for tract of land along the mid-Atlantic coast.
1607 Edwin became a member of the Council of Virginia.
1608 Leased a London town house at Aldersgate.
1609 December - Sir Edwin denounced the vicar of Northbourne, Henoch Clapham.
1610 On the last day of the year James I dissolved Parliament. Except for the brief session of 1614, Parliament didn't meet again until 1621.
1611 The first recorded letter from 'Northborn' is dated March 1611.
1613 Espoused constitutional limitations on the crown.
1613/14 The formal grant of the Northbourne Court made in March 1613/14.
1614 Sir Edwin began to build a new mansion at Northbourne Court. Completed in 1616.
1614 Parliament met on April 5th and Edwin was returned as MP for Rochester and also it seems Hindon in Wiltshire. This was the 'Addled Parliament', so called because it passed not a single statute, and was dissolved by James I on June 7th, and not summoned again for more than six years. Sandys, along with others, was called to account for his speeches and was confined to London for a month; sixteen MPs suffered some sort of punishment. Sir Edwin directed his energies to various new colonial enterprises, particularly the Virginia Company.
1614 Edwin became a member of the East India Company.
1615 Appointed Sheriff of Kent.
1615 Edwin joined the Bermuda Company as one of the Gentlemen Adventurers who invested to colonize Bermuda. In 1619 he campaigned for the governorship of the Bermuda Company but failed.
1618 The 'Great Migration' to the New World (1618-23) increases Jamestown's population from 400 to 4,500, but most die from disease, starvation, and Indian attack and some simply return to England.
1619 Edwin elected treasurer of the Virginia Company. He devoted a great deal of time to the company, although the day-to-day affairs were undertaken by John Ferrar.
1619 Governor Francis Yeardley was directed by Sir Edwin Sandys to issue writs for the election of a general assembly, and July 30, 1619, the first house of burgesses, and the first representative legislature body ever assembled in America met in the church at Jamestown.
1620/21 January - MP for Sandwich, Kent. 1621, 1624.
1621 Imprisoned in The Tower on the 16th June by the king together with the celebrated John Selden and others, but they were released a month later on the 16th July. Edwin's outspoken speeches in Parliament and James I's suspicion about the activities of the Virginia Company led to his imprisonment. On release the Privy Council confined him to within five miles of his Northbourne house; the restriction was lifted on 6th November.
1621 George Sandys (1578-1644), Edwin's brother, poet and traveller, accompanied the new governor, Sir Francis Wyatt, to Virginia, where he remained until 1631. George Sandys wrote a letter to Samuel Wrote describing the dire state of the colony which unintentionally contributed to the collapse of the Virginia Company. George Sandy's plantation was across the James River from Jamestown. In 1621 he became colonial treasurer of the Virginia Company. While in Virginia, George Sandys produced his most famous work, a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1626.
1624 King James annulled the Virginia Company's charter and Virginia became a royal colony.
1625/6 Due to loss of support in Kent he became MP for Penryn, Cornwall, January 1625/6, May1625.
1625 March - Death of James I and accession of Charles I.
1627/8 March - Failed to gain a seat in Parliament.
1629 October - Died and buried at Northbourne under an impressive monument.
1640 Edwin's last wife, Katherine dies.