"This Christian prosecutiõ" was the Virginia Company and its system of colonisation. There is also in one of the show-cases in the Bodleian an interesting short dictionary of the language of the Chesapeake Indians compiled by Strachey. In a note attached thereto Strachey says that he thinks it will be useful to persons who wish to "trade or truck" with the Indians.
Another memorable fact in regard to William Strachey I may mention here, though it was not known to my father. I lately discovered that Campion, the poet-musician, who, like Strachey, was a Member of Gray's Inn, wrote a short Latin poem to Strachey. It is addressed "Ad Guillielmus Strachæum." In it Campion tells Strachey that although he has very few verses to give to his "old comrade," the man "who rejoiced in and made many competent verses," he will always be dear to him. He ends by calling him "summus pieridem unicusque cultor." The poem concludes almost as it began: "Strachaeo, veteri meo sodali"—To Strachey, my old comrade.
Evidently Strachey did not keep his verses entirely for dedication. As far as I know, the best of his verses dedicatory are those addressed to Lord Bacon in his "Historie of Travaile into Virginia." They run:—
Wild as they are, accept them, so we're wee;
To make them civill will our honour be;
And if good worcks be the effects of myndes,
Which like good angells be, let our designes,
As we are Angli, make us Angells too;
No better worck can state—or church-man do.
The Campion connection interests me personally because Campion was the protagonist of unrhymed lyrical verse—my special metrical hobby. I like to think that William Strachey may have supported Campion in his controversy with Gabriel Harvey, who, by the way, lived at Saffron Walden, from which town came also William Strachey. There is danger, however, in such speculation. Before long someone may prove that it was not Bacon who wrote Shakespeare but Strachey who wrote both Bacon and Shakespeare.
The following example of my father's family lore was still more interesting and exciting to us. John Strachey, son of William Strachey, married a Miss Hodges of Wedmore, an heiress in the heraldic sense, through whom we can proudly claim to represent the Somersetshire family of Hodges, whose arms we have always quartered. This lady's grandfather, or great-grandfather—I am not quite sure which—was of the very best type of Elizabethan soldiers-errant. He was killed at the Siege of Antwerp in 1583.
He had the good fortune to be commemorated in one of the most spirited epitaphs of his age. On the wall of Wedmore Church in Somersetshire is a brass tablet bearing a heart surrounded by a laurel-wreath. The inscription of the memorial runs thus:
* * * * *
Sacred to the memory of Captain Thomas Hodges, of the County of Somerset, esq., who, at the siege of Antwerp, about 1583, with unconquered courage won two ensigns from the enemy; where, receiving his last wound, he gave three legacies: his soule to the Lord Jesus, his body to be lodged in Flemish earth, his heart to be sent to his dear wife in England.
Here lies his wounded heart, for whome
One kingdom was too small a roome;
Two kingdoms therefore have thought good to part
So stout a body and so brave a heart.