William Strachey
Encyclopedia
William Strachey was an English writer whose works are among the primary sources for the early history of the English colonisation of North America. He is best remembered today as the eye-witness reporter of the 1609 shipwreck
on the uninhabited island of Bermuda
of the colonial ship Sea Venture
, which was caught in a hurricane while sailing to Virginia. The survivors eventually reached Virginia after building two small ships during the ten months they spent on the island. His account of the incident and of the Virginia colony is thought by most Shakespearean scholars to have been a source for Shakespeare’s play The Tempest
.
, a small market town in Essex
, England, to William Strachey (d. 1598) and Mary Cooke (d. 1587), on an estate purchased by his grandfather in the 1560s. At the age of 16, he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge
in 1588. He later studied at Gray's Inn
, but there is no evidence he practiced law.
. They had two children, William, born 1596, and Edmund, born 1604. Strachey supported his family from his inheritance from his father, which he obtained after a legal battle with his stepmother, Elizabeth Brockett.
Strachey also kept a residence in London, where he regularly attended plays, eventually becoming a shareholder in the Blackfriars Theatre
, and became friends with the city’s poets and playwrights, including Thomas Campion
, John Donne
, Ben Jonson
, Hugh Holland
, John Marston
, George Chapman
, and Matthew Roydon, many of them members of the "Fraternity of Sireniacal Gentlemen" who met at the Mermaid Tavern
. Strachey wrote a commendatory poem for Jonson that was published in Jonson’s play Sejanus His Fall (1605), in which Shakespeare had acted in 1603.
But Strachey soon found himself in a precarious financial condition, a state from which he spent the rest of his life trying to recover, and in 1606 he used his wife’s family’s influence to obtain the positions of secretary to the English Levant Company
and to Thomas Glover, the English ambassador to Turkey
. He travelled to Constantinople
, but he quarrelled with the ambassador and was dismissed in March 1607 and returned to England. He then decided to mend his fortunes in the New World
, so in 1609 he purchased two shares in the Virginia Company
and sailed to Virginia
on the Sea Venture
with Sir Thomas Gates
and Sir George Somers
in the summer of that year.
Sea Venture with the leaders of the expedition when the ship was blown off course by a hurricane. Leaking, and with its foundering imminent, the ship was run aground off the coast of Bermuda
, accidentally beginning England's colonisation of that Atlantic archipelago
. The group was stranded on the island for almost a year, during which they constructed two small boats in which they eventually completed the voyage to Virginia.
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 Jamestown
colony. Being critical of the management of the colony, it was suppressed by the Virginia Company. After the dissolution of the company it was published in 1625 by Samuel Purchas
as "A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir THOMAS GATES Knight"
. It is thought to be one of the sources for Shakespeare's The Tempest
because of certain verbal, plot and thematic similarities. Other scholars have questioned it as a source for The Tempest
.
Strachey's writings are among the few first-hand descriptions of Virginia in the period. His list of words of the Powhatan
is one of only two records of the language (the other being Captain John Smith's).
in 1609. He returned to England probably in late 1611 and published a compilation of the colonial laws put in place by the governors.
He then produced an extended manuscript about the Virginia colony, The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia, dedicating the first version to the earl of Northumberland in 1612. The work included his eyewitness account of life in early Virginia, but it borrowed heavily from the earlier work of Richard Willes, James Rosier
, John Smith, and others. He 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
.
Following the death of his wife sometime before 1615, he remarried to a widow named Dorothy. Strachey died of unknown causes in June 1621 and the parish register of St. Giles, Camberwell, in Southwark records his burial on 21 June 1621. He died in poverty, leaving this verse:
, identified by the family seal, an eagle
.
Shipwreck
A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....
on the uninhabited island of Bermuda
Bermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
of the colonial ship Sea Venture
Sea Venture
The Sea Venture was a 17th-century English sailing ship, the wrecking of which in Bermuda is widely thought to have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest...
, which was caught in a hurricane while sailing to Virginia. The survivors eventually reached Virginia after building two small ships during the ten months they spent on the island. His account of the incident and of the Virginia colony is thought by most Shakespearean scholars to have been a source for Shakespeare’s play The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
.
Early life
Strachey was born in Saffron WaldenSaffron Walden
Saffron Walden is a medium-sized market town in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England. It is located north of Bishop's Stortford, south of Cambridge and approx north of London...
, a small market town in Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
, England, to William Strachey (d. 1598) and Mary Cooke (d. 1587), on an estate purchased by his grandfather in the 1560s. At the age of 16, he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...
in 1588. He later studied at Gray's Inn
Gray's Inn
The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns...
, but there is no evidence he practiced law.
Family and career
On 9 June 1595 Strachey married Frances Forster and settled near her home in Crowhurst in SurreySurrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
. They had two children, William, born 1596, and Edmund, born 1604. Strachey supported his family from his inheritance from his father, which he obtained after a legal battle with his stepmother, Elizabeth Brockett.
Strachey also kept a residence in London, where he regularly attended plays, eventually becoming a shareholder in the Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name of a theatre in the Blackfriars district of the City of London during the Renaissance. The theatre began as a venue for child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs; in this function, the theatre hosted some of the most innovative drama of Elizabeth and...
, and became friends with the city’s poets and playwrights, including Thomas Campion
Thomas Campion
Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet and physician. He wrote over a hundred lute songs; masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.-Life:...
, John Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
, Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
, Hugh Holland
Hugh Holland
Hugh Holland , the son of Robert Holland, was born in Denbigh in the north of Wales. He was educated at Westminster School under William Camden, where he excelled in classics, and proceeded in 1589 to Trinity College, Cambridge on a scholarship...
, John Marston
John Marston
John Marston was an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods...
, George Chapman
George Chapman
George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets...
, and Matthew Roydon, many of them members of the "Fraternity of Sireniacal Gentlemen" who met at the Mermaid Tavern
Mermaid Tavern
The Mermaid Tavern was a tavern on Cheapside in London during the Elizabethan era, located east of St. Paul's Cathedral on the corner of Friday Street and Bread Street. It was the site of the so-called Friday Street Club...
. Strachey wrote a commendatory poem for Jonson that was published in Jonson’s play Sejanus His Fall (1605), in which Shakespeare had acted in 1603.
But Strachey soon found himself in a precarious financial condition, a state from which he spent the rest of his life trying to recover, and in 1606 he used his wife’s family’s influence to obtain the positions of secretary to the English Levant Company
Levant Company
The Levant Company, or Turkey Company, was an English chartered company formed in 1581, to regulate English trade with Turkey and the Levant...
and to Thomas Glover, the English ambassador to Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. He travelled to Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, but he quarrelled with the ambassador and was dismissed in March 1607 and returned to England. He then decided to mend his fortunes in the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
, so in 1609 he purchased two shares in the Virginia Company
Virginia Company
The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I on 10 April1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America...
and sailed to Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
on the Sea Venture
Sea Venture
The Sea Venture was a 17th-century English sailing ship, the wrecking of which in Bermuda is widely thought to have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest...
with Sir Thomas Gates
Thomas Gates (governor)
Sir Thomas Gates , followed George Percy as governor of Jamestown, the English colony of Virginia . Percy, through inept leadership, was responsible for the lives lost during the period called the Starving Time...
and Sir George Somers
George Somers
This article is about the English naval hero. For the American football player, see George Somers Admiral Sir George Somers was an English naval hero. Born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, the son of John Somers, his first fame came as part of an expedition led by Sir Amyas Preston against the Spanish...
in the summer of that year.
Shipwreck of the Sea Venture
Strachey was a passenger aboard the flagshipFlagship
A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships, reflecting the custom of its commander, characteristically a flag officer, flying a distinguishing flag...
Sea Venture with the leaders of the expedition when the ship was blown off course by a hurricane. Leaking, and with its foundering imminent, the ship was run aground off the coast of Bermuda
Bermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
, accidentally beginning England's colonisation of that Atlantic archipelago
Archipelago
An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...
. The group was stranded on the island for almost a year, during which they constructed two small boats in which they eventually completed the voyage to Virginia.
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 Jamestown
Jamestown, Virginia
Jamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607 , it was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, following several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke...
colony. Being critical of the management of the colony, it was suppressed by the Virginia Company. After the dissolution of the company it was published in 1625 by Samuel Purchas
Samuel Purchas
Samuel Purchas , was an English travel writer, a near-contemporary of Richard Hakluyt.Purchas was born at Thaxted, Essex, and graduated at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1600; later he became a B.D., and with this degree was admitted at Oxford in 1615. In 1604 he was presented by James I to the...
as "A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir THOMAS GATES Knight"
True Reportory
True Reportory is the short-title of a 24,000 word narrative of early colonial literature, "A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight; vpon, and from the Ilands of the Bermudas: his comming to Virginia, and the estate of that Colonie then, and after, vnder the...
. It is thought to be one of the sources for Shakespeare's The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
because of certain verbal, plot and thematic similarities. Other scholars have questioned it as a source for The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
.
Strachey's writings are among the few first-hand descriptions of Virginia in the period. His list of words of the Powhatan
Powhatan
The Powhatan is the name of a Virginia Indian confederation of tribes. It is estimated that there were about 14,000–21,000 of these native Powhatan people in eastern Virginia when the English settled Jamestown in 1607...
is one of only two records of the language (the other being Captain John Smith's).
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 ScrivenerMatthew Scrivener
Matthew Scrivener was an English colonist in Virginia. He served briefly as acting governor of Jamestown, when he was succeeded by Captain John Smith...
in 1609. He returned to England probably in late 1611 and published a compilation of the colonial laws put in place by the governors.
He then produced an extended manuscript about the Virginia colony, The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia, dedicating the first version to the earl of Northumberland in 1612. The work included his eyewitness account of life in early Virginia, but it borrowed heavily from the earlier work of Richard Willes, James Rosier
James Rosier
James Rosier , the son of a Church of England clergyman, became a Roman Catholic after graduating from Cambridge. He is known for his account of a 1605 expedition to Maine in which he describes the native peoples and fauna and a journey along an unidentified "great river" which has not been...
, John Smith, and others. He produced two more versions during the next six years, dedicating one to Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
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
Hakluyt Society
Founded in 1846, the Hakluyt Society is a registered charity based in London, England, which seeks to advance knowledge and education by the publication of scholarly editions of primary records of voyages, travels and other geographical material...
.
Following the death of his wife sometime before 1615, he remarried to a widow named Dorothy. Strachey died of unknown causes in June 1621 and the parish register of St. Giles, 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.
Archeological record
In 1996, Strachey's signet ring was discovered in the ruins of JamestownJamestown, Virginia
Jamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607 , it was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, following several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke...
, identified by the family seal, an eagle
Eagle
Eagles are members of the bird family Accipitridae, and belong to several genera which are not necessarily closely related to each other. Most of the more than 60 species occur in Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just two species can be found in the United States and Canada, nine more in...
.
Strachey's works
- "A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir THOMAS GATES Knight" original-spelling version at Virtual Jamestown.
- "A True Reportory of the Wreck and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight" modern-spelling version at Virtual Jamestown.
- For The Colony in Virginea Britannia. Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, &c. original-spelling version at Virtual Jamestown.
- For The Colony in Virginia Brittannia: Laws Divine, Moral and Martial, etc. modern-spelling version at Virtual Jamestown.
- The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia at Google Books.
- "A Dictionary of Powhatan" at Google Books.