One of the first labors of Newport was to erect a suitable church.  Services had been held under many disadvantages, which Smith depicts in his “Advertisements for Unexperienced Planters,” published in London in 1631: 

“When I first went to Virginia, I well remember, we did hang an awning (which is an old saile) to three or foure trees to shadow us from the Sunne, our walls were rales of wood, our seats unhewed trees, till we cut plankes, our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighboring trees, in foule weather we shifted into an old rotten tent, for we had few better, and this came by the way of adventure for me; this was our Church, till we built a homely thing like a barne, set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge and earth, so was also the walls:  the best of our houses of the like curiosity, but the most part farre much worse workmanship, that could neither well defend wind nor raine, yet we had daily Common Prayer morning and evening, every day two Sermons, and every three moneths the holy Communion, till our Minister died, [Robert Hunt] but our Prayers daily, with an Homily on Sundaies.”

It is due to Mr. Wingfield, who is about to disappear from Virginia, that something more in his defense against the charges of Smith and the others should be given.  It is not possible now to say how the suspicion of his religious soundness arose, but there seems to have been a notion that he had papal tendencies.  His grandfather, Sir Richard Wingfield, was buried in Toledo, Spain.  His father, Thomas Maria Wingfield, was christened by Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole.  These facts perhaps gave rise to the suspicion.  He answers them with some dignity and simplicity, and with a little querulousness: 

“It is noised that I combyned with the Spanniards to the distruccion of the Collony; that I ame an atheist, because I carryed not a Bible with me, and because I did forbid the preacher to preache; that I affected a kingdome; that I did hide of the comon provision in the ground.

“I confesse I have alwayes admyred any noble vertue and prowesse, as well in the Spanniards (as in other nations):  but naturally I have alwayes distrusted and disliked their neighborhoode.  I sorted many bookes in my house, to be sent up to me at my goeing to Virginia; amongst them a Bible.  They were sent up in a trunk to London, with divers fruite, conserves, and preserves, which I did sett in Mr. Crofts his house in Ratcliff.  In my beeing at Virginia, I did understand my trunk was thear broken up, much lost, my sweetmeates eaten at his table, some of my bookes which I missed to be seene in his hands:  and whether amongst them my Bible was so ymbeasiled or mislayed by my servants, and not sent me, I knowe not as yet.