Kieran Doherty Quote

Captain John Smith, who had taken the colony’s reins in September 1608, was fully able to continue leading and he was entitled, under the terms of the original charter, to hold the office for a full year, or until September 10, 1609. However, several settlers, men who saw themselves assuming the leadership of the settlement, had other ideas. This group was almost certainly led by two of the colony’s original settlers who had left the colony only to return in the fleet of 1609. One of the two was Gabriel Archer, the Blessing passenger who wrote about conditions on the vessel in the hurricane. His right-hand man was John Sicklemore, a settler who, for reasons no one has ever been able to determine, used the alias John Ratcliffe. These two men soundly despised Smith—a feeling he returned in kind. Now, they saw an opportunity to supplant Smith as the colony’s leader or, at the very least, to force him to step down in accordance with the terms of the new charter.