Church of England allows Jamestown exhumation

The Church of England has given archaeologists permission to dig under a church and remove DNA from a 400-year-old body to determine if America’s Jamestown settlement’s founder was buried under the 17th-century fort.

The Church said archaeologists could dig under the floor of All Saints Church in Shelley, Suffolk, to reach the skeleton of Elizabeth Tilney, the sister of Bartholomew Gosnold, a leader of the English expedition that founded Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.

To tell if a skeleton recovered from the site of the original Jamestown fort is Gosnold’s, scientists need DNA from a female relative.

This is the first time the Church has agreed to let DNA be taken from a grave for a scientific project, the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich says.

A statement said the request was granted “because the reason and methodology of the project was well thought through”.

The excavation will take place in June.