First Celebration Event

NH Highland Games for 600th Anniversary

Clan Sinclair and Clan Gunn will be designated as "Honored Clans". Both clans are anticipating large turnouts on this momentous anniversary of the arrival of Prince Henry Sinclair and Sir James Gunn to these shores in 1398. For those desiring a greater depth of information, there will be a Symposium consisting of 1-hour sessions on such topics as Westford Knight, Newport Tower, Rosslyn Chapel & Castle, Sinclair Genealogy, How-to-get-children-involved, and the Prince Henry saga.

Immediately after the NH Highland Games, the 600th Celebration will reconvene in Westford, MA, near the site of the Westford Knight Carving. A harbor cruise is planned on the Merrimac River in Newburyport, and a commemorative luncheon will follow in Exeter, NH.

Everyone is urged to obtain advanced registrations, tickets for functions, and lodging. Space will be limited. For information, contact Pete Cummings, General Chair, at 65 Hartwell St, West Boylston, MA, 01583; or phone 508-835-2900; or fax 508-835-2944; or Email henry1398@aol.com.

Setting Sail

Genealogy of Prince Henry

Book describes the voyage

Convincing Proofs

1. Contingency plans. Before Henry Sinclair left on his voyage, he made certain dispositions of his lands to his brothers, John and David. To his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, who married Sir John Drummond of Cargill, he left his lands in Norway, provided he died without a male heir.
2. The Zeno Map. In 1398, Prince Henry Sinclair sent Nicolo Zeno with four ships to carry out a survey of Greenland. Nicolo took John, the Bishop of Orkney, with him to Greenland, and on his return two years later, he took Henrik, Bishop of Greenland, to the Orkneys. This exchange of Bishops appears in the Vatican publication "Hierarchia Catholica" on page 283, covering the years 1198 to 1431. It is a powerful confirmation of the Zeno survey of Greenland. The verification of the "Zeno Narrative" and Map was given further corroboration by such renowned cartographers as Professors Hapgood, Taylor, and Hobbs; Professors Barry Fell and Roger McLeod; Lord John Julian Norwich (noted Venetian historian); J. H. Major (Secretary of the Royal Geographic Society), and many others.
3. Accuracy attested & confirmed. For the next several centuries the "Zeno Map" was used by such well-known cartographers as Ruscelli (in 1561), Mercator (in 1569), and Ortelius (in 1574).
4. The Zeno Narrative. In the words of Professor Taylor of London University, it appears to the present writer that it would be quite out of the question for any author to invent a story which in every detail reflects fact about which it would be quite impossible that he could have been aware.
5. Zeno had never been to Rosslyn. The "Zeno Narrative" speaks of the "spring of pitch" which the reconnaissance party of 100 soldiers found at Stellarton and which they reported back to Prince Henry at Guysborough, both places in Nova Scotia. On hearing this, Prince Henry considered it was a "good omen" because there was a similar "spring of pitch" at his home at Rosslyn in Scotland. The "pitch" had been used as a medicine against the Black Death. Now this story is faithfully recounted in the Zeno Narrative, although Antonio Zeno had never been to Rosslyn. In other words, he could only have heard of the "spring of pitch" of Rosslyn from Henry as they both stood listening to the report of the returning soldiers in Nova Scotia.
6. The Westford Knight in Massachusetts. The effigy of a medieval knight is described by Professor Lethbridge of Cambridge University; "The sword carved on the rock can hardly be anything but a medieval sword. The whole hilt looks about AD 1200-1300.
7. Opinion of noted expert on heraldry. Sir Iain Moncrieffe, the Albany Herald (one of Scotland's most noted authorities on heraldry) writes, "Henry Sinclair was related to the Gunns . . . so the discovery at Westford of what is apparently an effigy of a fourteenth century knight in bascinet, mail, and surcoat, with a heater-shaped shield bearing devices of a Norse-Scottish character as might have been expected of a knight in Jarl Henry Sinclair's entourage
8. Newport Tower. In Rhode Island the Newport Tower is constructed in a similar style to the Norse/Scottish buildings of the Western and Northern Isles. More important, every single measurement within Newport Tower is based on the Scottish ell, which equals three Norse feet.
9. Indian language. Professor Roger McLeod of Lowell University in Massachusetts compiled a huge dictionary of Norse and Gaelic words which have been assimilated into the language of the tribes along the eastern seaboard of America. Reider T. Sherwin in his book "The Viking and the Red Man" also writes about the Norse origin of the Algonquin language.
10. Indian Legends. When Henry began to build a ship from local materials, the Micmacs tell of how "He built himself an island, planted trees on it, and sailed away in his stone canoe." When the Narragansett Indians were asked who built the Newport Tower, they replied, "They were fire-haired men with green eyes who sailed up river in a ship like a gull with a broken wing."
11. Rosslyn Chapel. Far across the ocean in Scotland at the Rosslyn Chapel there are stone carvings of Indian maize, the American aloe cactii and sassafras, carved before Columbus was born!
12. The Hakluyt Society. From the Boston Herald in 1892, one can read; "Leif came to the land of North America, built houses, made friends of the natives and explored the land, giving names to places some of which exist to the present day. These names were placed on the charts and are the same which Henry St. Clair used, affixed to his maps, now in possession of the Hakluyt Society."

Who's involved?

Spread the word!

Interesting supposition:

Clan Sinclair