William Strachey
William Strachey | |
---|---|
Born | 4 April 1572 Saffron Walden, Essex, England |
Died | June 1621 (aged 49) |
Burial place | St Giles' Church, Camberwell |
Occupation | Writer |
Spouse(s) | Frances Forster Dorothy (surname unknown) |
Children | 2 |
Signature | |
William Strachey (4 April 1572 – buried 21 June 1621) was an English writer whose works are among the primary sources for the early history of the
Family
William Strachey, born 4 April 1572 in Saffron Walden, Essex, was the grandson of William Strachey (died 1587),[1] and the eldest son of William Strachey (died 1598) and Mary Cooke (died 1587),[2] the daughter of Henry Cooke, Merchant Taylor of London, by Anne Goodere, the daughter of Henry Goodere[3] and Jane Greene.[4] Strachey's maternal grandfather, Henry Cooke (died 1551), held Lesnes Abbey in Kent; he was succeeded by his son, Edmund Cooke (died 1619), while his younger son, Richard Cooke, has been identified as the author of Description de Tous les Provinces de France.[5][6]
By his father's first marriage Strachey had three brothers and three sisters.[6] Strachey's mother died in 1587, and in August of that year Strachey's father married Elizabeth Brocket of Hertfordshire, by whom he had five daughters.[6][7]
Strachey was brought up on an estate purchased by his grandfather in the 1560s.[6] In 1588, at the age of sixteen, he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge,[8] but did not take a degree.[9] In 1605 he was at Gray's Inn, but there is no evidence that he made the law his profession.[2][9] In 1602 he inherited his father's estate following a legal dispute with Elizabeth Brocket, his stepmother.[2]
Career
Strachey wrote a sonnet, Upon Sejanus,[10] which was published in the 1605 edition of the 1603 play Sejanus His Fall by Ben Jonson.[7][11]
Strachey also kept a residence in London, where he regularly attended plays. He was a shareholder in the Children of the Revels, a troupe of boy actors who performed 'in a converted room in the former Blackfriars monastery',[7] as evidenced by his deposition in a lawsuit in 1606. According to Sisson:
In 1600
John Marston, William Strachey, and his own wife. There were later complications. But in 1606 William Strachey had a one-sixth share in the Blackfriars Theatre. Strachey, there is no manner of doubt on the evidence and from the signature of his deposition, was the well-known voyager and writer whose account of the Bermuda voyage left its marks on Shakespeare’s Tempest. He gave evidence in the suit as ‘William Strachey, of Crowhurst, Surrey, gentleman, aged 34’ on 4 July 1606.[12]
Strachey became friends with the city's poets and playwrights, including
By 1605 Strachey was in precarious financial circumstances[2] from which he spent the rest of his life trying to recover. In 1606 he used a family connection to obtain the position of secretary to Thomas Glover, the English ambassador to Turkey.[7] He travelled to Constantinople, but quarrelled with the ambassador and was dismissed in March 1607[2] and returned to England in June 1608.[14] He then decided to mend his fortunes in the New World, and in 1609 purchased two shares in the Virginia Company[2] and sailed to Virginia on the Sea Venture with Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers in the summer of that year.
Shipwreck of the Sea Venture
Strachey was a passenger aboard the
Strachey wrote an eloquent letter dated 15 July 1610, to an unnamed "Excellent Lady" in England about the Sea Venture disaster, including an account of the precarious state of the
Strachey's writings are among the few first-hand descriptions of Virginia in the period. His glossary of words of the Powhatan[17] is one of only two records of the language (the other being Captain John Smith's).[18]
Later life and death
Strachey remained at Jamestown for less than a year, but during that time he became the Secretary of the Colony after the drowning death of Matthew Scrivener in 1609. He returned to England probably in late 1611 and published a compilation of the colonial laws put in place by the governors.[19]
He then produced an extended manuscript about the Virginia colony, The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia, dedicating the first version to Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, in 1612. The manuscript included his eyewitness account of life in early Virginia, but borrowed heavily from the earlier work of Richard Willes, James Rosier, John Smith, and others. Strachey produced two more versions during the next six years, dedicating one to Francis Bacon and the other to Sir Allen Apsley. It too was critical of the Virginia Company management of the colony, and Strachey failed to find a patron to publish his work, which was finally first published in 1849 by the Hakluyt Society.
Strachey died of unknown causes in June 1621. The parish register of St Giles' Church, Camberwell, in Southwark records his burial on 21 June 1621. He died in poverty, leaving this verse:
Hark! Twas the trump of death that blew
My hour has come. False world adieu
Thy pleasures have betrayed me so
That I to death untimely go.
In 1996, Strachey's
.Marriages and issue
On 9 June 1595 Strachey married Frances Forster,
Strachey's son, William, married three times, and died in 1635.[23]
Works
- A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir THOMAS GATES Knight[24] and at Virtual Jamestown.[25]
- For The Colony in Virginea Britannia. Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, &c. original-spelling version[26] and modern-spelling version at Virtual Jamestown.[27]
- The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia at Google Books.[28]
- "A Dictionary of Powhatan" at Google Books.[29]
Notes
- ^ Woodward 2009, pp. 1–2.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Wood 2004.
- ^ Henry Goodere was the brother of Thomas Goodere of Hadley; Fetherston 1877, p. 67; Cass 1875, p. 263.
- ^ Fetherston 1877, p. 67;Woodward 2009, p. 2; Hawley 1879, p. 604.
- ^ Hasted 1797, pp. 253–4; Potter 2004, pp. 10–11.
- ^ a b c d Zacek, Natalie, William Strachey (1572–1621), Encyclopedia of Virginia Retrieved 27 March 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f g Woodward 2009, p. 3.
- ^ "Strachey, William (STRY587W)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ a b c d Woodward 2009, p. 2.
- ^ Upon Sejanus, Encyclopedia Virginia Retrieved 28 March 2013.
- ^ Jonson 1616
- ^ Sisson cites the lawsuit as P.R.O. C 24/327/22; Sisson 1956, pp. 188–9; Munro 2005, p. 202.
- ^ Culliford 1965, p. 50.
- ^ Woodward 2009, p. 4.
- ^ Glover, Lorri (6 December 2012). "Sea Venture". encyclopediavirginia.org. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
- ISBN 978-1-903436-08-0.
- ^ Campbell 1860, p. 106.
- ISBN 052129875X.
- ^ Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .
- ^ "Strachey Ring-Historic Jamestowne". Historicjamestowne.org. Archived from the original on 27 December 2013. Retrieved 25 December 2013.
- ^ Lysons 1811, pp. 59–60; Nichols 1825, p. 586; Nichols 1865, pp. 220–3; Blanch 1872, p. 41.
- ^ 'Parishes: Camberwell', A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 4 (1912), pp. 24-36 Date accessed: 29 March 2013.
- ^ Betham 1805, p. 431.
- ^ "original-spelling". Retrieved 25 December 2013.
- ^ "modern-spelling". Retrieved 25 December 2013.
- ^ "Personal Narratives from the Virtual Jamestown Project, 1575-1705". Etext.lib.virginia.edu. Retrieved 25 December 2013.
- ^ "Personal Narratives from the Virtual Jamestown Project, 1575-1705". Etext.lib.virginia.edu. Retrieved 25 December 2013.
- ^ Strachey, William (1849). The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britinia - William Strachey - Google Boeken. Retrieved 25 December 2013 – via Google Books.
- .
References
- Betham, William (1805). The Baronetage of England. Vol. V. London: Warde and Betham. p. 431. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
- Blanch, William Harnet (1872). The Parish of Camberwell. London: E.W. Allen. p. 41. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
- Campbell, Charles (1860). History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Co. Retrieved 27 March 2013.
- Cass, Frederick Charles (1875). "Notes on the Church and Parish of Monken Hadley". Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society. IV. London: J.B. Nichols and Sons: 253–86. Retrieved 27 March 2013.
- Culliford, S.G. (1965). William Strachey, 1572-1621. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. ISBN 9780598212559. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
- Fetherston, John, ed. (1877). The Visitation of the County of Warwick in the Year 1619. Vol. XII. London: Harleian Society. p. 67. Retrieved 27 March 2013.
- Hasted, Edward (1797). The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent. Vol. II (2nd ed.). Canterbury: W. Bristow. pp. 253–4. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
- Hawley, Thomas; et al. (1879). The Visitations of Essex, Part II. Vol. XIV. London: Harleian Society. p. 604. Retrieved 27 March 2013.
- Jonson, Ben (1616). The Workes of Ben Jonson. London: William Stansby.
- Lysons, Daniel (1811). The Environs of London. Vol. I (2nd ed.). London: T. Cadell and W. Davies. pp. 59–60. Retrieved 29 March 2013.
- Munro, Lucy (2005). Children of the Queen's Revels; A Jacobean Theatre Repertory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 202. ISBN 9781139446051. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
- Nichols, John, ed. (1825). The Gentleman's Magazine. Vol. XCV (2nd ed.). London: John Nichols and Son. pp. 583–7. Retrieved 29 March 2013.
- Nichols, John Gough (1865). Surrey Archaeological Collections. Vol. III. London: Lovell Reeve & Co. pp. 223–6. Retrieved 29 March 2013.
- Potter, David, ed. (2004). Foreign Intelligence and Information in Elizabethan England; Two English Treatises on the State of France, 1580-1584. Cambridge: Royal Historical Society. p. 11. ISBN 9780521847247. Retrieved 27 March 2013.
- Sisson, Charles Jasper (1956). New Readings in Shakespeare. Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 188–9. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
- Wood, Betty (2004). "Strachey, William (1572–1621)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26623. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
- Woodward, Hobson (2009). A Brave Vessel; The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 9781101060322. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
External links
- Works by or about William Strachey at Internet Archive
- Zacek, Natalie, William Strachey (1572–1621), Encyclopedia Virginia Retrieved 27 March 2013
- Will of William Strachey of Walden, National Archives Retrieved 27 March 2013
- Will of Henry Cooke, Merchant Taylor of London, National Archives Retrieved 27 March 2013
- Will of Robert Draper, gentleman, of Camberwell, Surrey, National Archives Retrieved 29 March 2013
- Will of Matthew Draper, gentleman, of Camberwell, Surrey, National Archives Retrieved 29 March 2013
- Will of William Strachey, gentleman, of Saint Giles in the Fields, National Archives Retrieved 29 March 2013
- 'Elizabeth Draper (d. April 27, 1605)', A Who’s Who of Tudor Women: D Retrieved 29 March 2013