Robert Hunt (chaplain)

Robert Hunt (c. 1568x1570 – 1608), a vicar in the Church of England, was chaplain of the expedition that founded the first successful English colony in the New World, at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.

Hunt was born in Hoath, near Reculver, in Kent, England, in the late 1560s or early 1570s. He was vicar of Reculver from 18 January 1594 until he resigned and was replaced on 5 October 1602. He was forced to leave his wife Elizabeth Edwards and two children Thomas & Elizabeth there in disgrace then, because of his wife's adulterous "seeing too much of one John Taylor". In 1606, he was forced to leave his second parish, at Heathfield, in Sussex, when he was accused of having his own adulterous affair with his servant, Thomasina Plumber, as well as "absenteeism, and neglecting of his congregation".

Summoned to London, Hunt was "recruited" by Richard Bancroft (the Archbishop of Canterbury), along with Richard Hakluyt, Jr. (the geographer and priest) and Edward Maria Wingfield, as chaplain for the newest expedition to the New World by the London Virginia Company. Hunt sailed with his fellow colonists aboard the Susan Constant (helmed by Captain Christopher Newport).

On 26 April 1607, after an unusually long voyage of 144 days, the 3 ships and 105 men and boys made landfall at the southern edge of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay at the Atlantic Ocean. They named the location Cape Henry, in honour of the young Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, eldest son of their king.

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