James Rosier

Penobscot River

James Rosier (1573-1609) was an English explorer who is notable for his account of a 1605 expedition to America in which describes native peoples and fauna of northern New England. He describes a journey along a "great river", but the identity of the river is not known for certain.

Rosier was born on 1 June 1573 at Winston, Suffolk, the son of James Rosier (d. 1581), a Church of England clergyman, and his wife, Dorothy Johnson. After his father's death in 1581, he was brought up in Ipswich by Robert Wolfrestone, a relative of his mother's, and then in Sir Philip Parker's household. After graduating BA from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1593 and MA in 1596, he entered the household of Sir Philip Woodhouse at Kimberley Hall in Norfolk where he became a Roman Catholic about 1602 under the influence of Lady Woodhouse, a member of the Catholic Yelverton family.

Rosier was among those who sailed to present-day Maine with Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602. About that time he met Thomas Arundell, who hoped to establish a colony in America for his fellow Catholics. Arundell joined with Plymouth merchants and perhaps his brother-in-law, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, to set forth an expedition under Captain George Weymouth to explore the Maine coast. The voyage lasted from 5 March to 18 July 1605, with Rosier on board as cape merchant and reporter.

According to Quinn, there were three versions of Rosier's account of the voyage: a now-lost journal; a manuscript version obtained first by Hakluyt and then by Purchas, who abridged it in Purchas his Pilgrimes in 1624; and yet another manuscript, perhaps edited by Hakluyt, which was published as A True Relation of the most prosperous voyage made this present year by Captaine George Waymouth in the Discovery of the Land of Virginia: where he discovered 60 miles of a most excellent River; together with a most fertile land, (London, 1605).

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