The window [left] is a colorful adaptation of the bas-relief that is found framed on the outside of the old Jamestown chapel, a few miles away from Williamsburg. It depicts the chaplain celebrating the Holy Communion, watched by Indian men and children. Beside the Old Heathfield church window is a set of pictures depicting Pocahontas, the ships carrying the colonists, and some local birds and plants. On the other side of the window is a framed record of the names of all the people who were the first colonists, all those who arrived in Virginia after a rough wintry voyage.

IT ALL BEGAN DEC. 19, 1606, WHEN the three ships set sail from Blackwall, on the River Thames below London. They had been granted a charter by King James I to plant a colony in the New World, in that part of North America known as Virginia. First explored in the late 1500s by English sailors and named in honor of Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, Virginia seemed a good place to plant a colony, despite a previous failure.

Unfortunately, however, when the three ships got beyond the estuary of the Thames, they met what they called "unprosperous winds." For six weeks, they had to shelter in the Downs, a stretch of water off the southeast coast of Kent near the Goodwin Sands. There they remained storm-tossed, still in sight of the shores of England.

On board one of the ships was the Rev. Robert Hunt (referred to by Captain John Smith in his journal as "Good Master Hunt, our Preacher").

At the time of his volunteering for this expedition, the Rev. Master Hunt was vicar All Saints' Church in Heathfield, Sussex, in the Diocese of Chichester. While the ships waited for favorable winds, poor Master Hunt became ill, so ill that few expected his recovery. His friends tried to persuade him to return home, for all this time it was simply a matter of rowing in the 10 miles to the English shore. But Good Master Hunt was not to be dissuaded from his purpose. He was sure that he was called by God to be a missionary for the would-be colonists and for the Indians. Only the hand of God would change his determination. Eventually he recovered, just in time to sail with the rest of the colonists.

They first landed on Cape Henry on the Virginia coast, April 26, 1607, where they erected a huge wooden cross and gave thanks to the Almighty for their safe passage across the Atlantic. After this first landing, the three boats sailed up into what is now called the James River, to a place where they were to build a fort, which they called Jamestown, in honor of their patron king. They surrounded their settlement with a palisade, which enclosed log cabins for all the colonists, a church, and a home for the chaplain, all of which can be seen today in the restored village.

IT WAS ON JUNE 21, 1607, THAT the colonists prepared for the first recorded service of the Holy Communion in North America. They stretched an old canvas sail across three or four trees and arranged some tree trunks to provide seats.

Before Master Hunt lay the brown leather-covered Book of Common Prayer, the one authorized in 1552, and, after the opening Lord's Prayer, the Collect for Purity, and perhaps the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, he read the Collect for the Third Sunday after Trinity, which seemed most appropriate for this occasion: "Lord, wee beseech thee mercifully to hear us, and unto whome thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, grant that by thy mighty ayde we may be defended, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Equally appropriate was the reading (from the First Epistle of Peter), which exhorted all Christians to "submit [themselves] ... under the mighty hand of God."

Among the many sights that any tourist can see at Jamestown today, beside the bronze statue of Pocahontas, is a replica of the cross erected at Cape Henry, the rebuilt church, and the bas-relief commemorating Robert Hunt's first Eucharist in America.

There is a sad ending to this story, however, for Robert Hunt succumbed to disease and died after he had been in the colony little more than a year. Maybe he planned one day to return to his vicarage in Old Heathfield, for he had left his wife and children there, but we don't know. At any rate, after his death, his family was permitted to live in the vicarage as long as they wished.

WHEN MY WIFE AND I VISITED Jamestown, we talked to some of the University of Virginia students who were building the thatched houses, the wattle and daub church, the priest's house, and in other ways restoring the village to what they believed to be its original shape. One student told us, "We don't know for sure, but the theory is that Robert Hunt had come down with typhus when he was on the boat near the Goodwin Sands, and although he had more or less recovered from that attack, it is speculated that he still harbored the bacillus in his body.

"Now," this student explained, "the only one person who could be trusted to be in charge of sharing out food was the chaplain, and it is surmised that, unknown to anyone, he also handed out typhus germs, and that may explain why two-thirds of the colonists died within a year, although the village of Jamestown was then surrounded by malarial swamps, and that may also have helped sending on colonists into the next world."

At any rate, the reconstructed settlement at Jamestown and the church in Old Heathfield where Robert Hunt was once vicar, are well worth a visit. And we can be thankful that the branch of the Anglican Church which he began in 1607 is now spread over all the United States. But it is more than that, for he set a pattern for the spread of Anglicanism even further throughout the world. o

The Rev. F. Newton Howden, now living in Tunbridge Wells, England, is the rector emeritus of Trinity Church, Lime Rock, Lakeville, Conn. He is the author of Life Here and Hereafter.