Presented by VSM Martin W. Leukhardt
March 1, 2014
Charles Harry Copestake Council 69 AMD
During visit to Rosslyn Chapel, its carvings allegedly secret messages. I looked for three things:
Stone carving of Templar Initiation: Kneeling Initiate holding Bible, with cable-tow about neck held by a Knight Templar standing behind him.
Latin Inscription: wine is strong, the King stronger, and woman stronger still.. …but truth the strongest of all.
Stone arch carvings of maize (Indian corn) and aloe.
Why the latter? (North American?) Done 50 years before Columbus allegedly discovered America!
The answer comes clear when one investigates the family roots of the St. Clairs (or Sinclairs).
To do so, one must go back in history to the Norsemen who explored and ravaged much of the European world from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and Ireland to Russia. (discovery and settlement of Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland, etc.)
One Norse adventurer by the name of Rollo gathered a large force and ravaged Northwestern France…..even sailed up the Seine to attack Paris. That did it. The King of France ceded the area now known as Normandy to Rollo. The Northmen settled and became known as Normans. The St. Clairs are descended from Rollo and prospered in Normandy.
When the Norman William the Bastard launched his invasion of England in 1066, there were at least 8 St. Clair knights riding with him at the Battle of Hastings.
The Norman Nobility who fought for William were rewarded with huge land holdings throughout England and Scotland. The St. Clair William the Seemly was given Rosslyn where he built a castle.
Through family heritage and marriage, the St. Clair’s also held title as jahrls of Orkney and owed allegiance to the King of Denmark. The people of the Orkney Isles were fishermen and seafarers.
Henry St. Clair and a Genovese named Zeno set sail with 12 ships in 1398 to Nova Scotia and then down the Northeastern coast of North America.
Made several additional journeys and allegedly carried out his dream of colonizing ARCADIA. The Indians of Rhode Island and Massachusetts have legends of the men who came on ships and taught them how to fish with nets. (Orkneys?) Sir Henry apparently developed a good relationship with the Indian inhabitants of his New Arcadia.
Sir Henry Sinclair spent so much time away for the next four years that the King of England encroached upon his holdings to take them away during his absence. When he returned he was killed in battle defending his holdings.
Now fast forward to 1524 and an Italian navigator named Giovanni da Verrazano. Born 1485 into a wealthy family of Florence that gave him connections, he was imbued with the new ideas and knowledge the city that gave birth to new ideas at the height of the Renaissance. (Artistic freedom, freedom from the tyranny of the Church and its Inquisition, development of exploration, learning and open exchange of ideas)
He became a mariner and connected with people of like background and thinking in Northern Italy (Genoa and Venice). There appeared to be an underground of adherents to certain secrets, of which he became a part. The ships on which he served were in the service of Portugal and France. There is some evidence that in 1521 he was commissioned by the King of France to attack Spanish ships. He subsequently convinced the King of France to commission an exploration of the Coast of l\Jorth America (to find a route to the Pacific Ocean). The financial backers of his venture were silk merchants.
In 1524, Verrazano and his brother Girolamo, a map maker, sailed from Madeira on the ship Dauphine (named after the French King) manned by 50 men and equipped with provisions for eight months. Forty-nine days later, around the second week of March, the Daupine reached what is now the coast of North Carolina. The first land he saw he called Annunziata, near the modern Cape Hatteras. He traveled north along the outer banks and named them Verrazania and the area itself Francesca.
He never stopped to explore the other side of the Outer Banks, the Chesapeake Bay, the Delaware Bay or the Hudson River. So was he really looking for a passage to the Pacific? He went north non-stop along the coast until he reached what is now New York bay at a place now named the Verrazano Narrows. (Bridge) He sailed to the upper bay, saw what is now Manhattan and called it d’ Angoule’me. It is thought that he named it after the title of Francis I before he became King of France. Others say it was named after the 14th Century Templar Fortress near the French port city of New Rochelle where the treasure of the Paris Temple may have been stored until it was placed aboard the ships of the Templar fleet in 1307.
Then he coasted the southern shore of Long Island, at the end of which he sailed north past what is now Block Island to another Island that he named after Rhodes, the idyllic landscape in Sannazaro’s Arcadia. (Eventually became the name of the entire State of Rhode Island.) The concept of ARCADIA referred to an ideal landscape where a virtuous people could live in peace.
At the mouth of Narragansett Bay, it is recorded that he received help from the Natives who guided him safely into the inner harbor. Samuel Morrison, the maritime historian, affirms that Verrazano’s ship was “piloted by an Indian” from Point Judith, through the narrow divide between Beavertail Point on Conanicut and Breton Point on Aquidneck, past the small Dumplings, and into the inner harbor, where he anchored. (Imagine: In Naragansett Bay, he found an “Indian” who was trustworthy and somehow knowledgeable enough to pilot the ship.)
This was the only place where Verrazano spent any time. (2 weeks) He remarked on the tendency of some of the Native population to appear European. There is evidence that the Wampanoag came in contact with Europeans before. E.g.: the Celtic/Norse word for boat was batos; the Algonquin word was pados.
The secret mission of Verrazano all along was to locate a Templar colony, founded under the leadership of the Sinclair family. In this mission he succeeded. Within the inner harbor was a Templar Baptistry built of local materials but resembled European models and shared the measurements of those built by both Templars and Cistercians. Even though the Baptistry was out of place, Verrazano showed no surprise and the map drawn by Girolamo referred to it simply as a “Norman Villa”.
Verrazano called the Newport site Refugio, lithe Refuge”. He didn’t say who he thought had been in need of refuge. He told the King that the Natives called the land Norumbega and Anorumbega, the former meaning “Norse” and the latter “Norman” …….Native American names for the village of the Northmen ……the men who visited from the North. This would have included French Norman survivors of the Templar demise, as well as Scottish eX-Templars and Orkney mariners.
From there he sailed north, missed Nova Scotia, to Newfoundland and Labrador. He returned to the French port of Dieppe and landed on 8 July 1524. He had not found a sea route to Cathay. (There is no evidence he even tried.) He did make a new map which added to what was known of the coastline ……but that was of little use to his backers……they were silk merchants. But he did find the American Arcadia ……a colony planted a century before. But unfortunately the colony had not survived. Nevertheless, his secret mission was fulfilled.