Pamunkey most powerful. Powhatan and his daughter Matoaka (Pocahontas), who achieved historical fame, were Pamunkey Native Americans. Captain Samuel Argall abducted her as a hostage in an attempt to secure the release of some English prisoners and ammunitions held by her father. Initial contact with Europeans was around 1570. "And from [1570] on at ever briefer intervals until the first permanent English colony was established at Jamestown in 1607, the Powhatan Confederacy was visited by white men: Spanish, French, and English." (Barbour, 5). Scholars estimate that when the English arrived in 1607, this paramount chiefdom numbered about 14,000–21,000 people. Colonists of
Richard Knightley (1617–1661) Richard Knightley (1617–1661) Sir Richard Knightley KB (1617–1661), of Fawsley in Northamptonshire, was an English Member of Parliament (MP). A member of Gray's Inn, Knightley was a member of a prominent Northamptonshire family who had married (in about 1637) Elizabeth Hampden, daughter of John Hampden, the leading opponent of Charles I. His cousin, also called Richard, had been MP for Northamptonshire and one of Hampden's parliamentary allies before the King dismissed Parliament in 1629. Like the rest of his family, Knightley's religious inclinations were Puritan. When Parliament was at last summoned once more in 1640, Knightley was elected MP for