In 1614 he returned to America, but now to the northern region assigned to the Plymouth Company. He gave name to Boston; explored and made a survey of the New England coast. On a second voyage he had a fight with a French squadron, was captured, and taken to Rochelle. While there he wrote a "Description of New England," for which service James I. appointed him "Admiral of New England." He died in London, in 1631, at the age of fifty-two, never having revisited Virginia. Upon his tomb, in the Church of St. Sepulchre's, London, may be still traced the outlines of the Three Turks' Heads and the inscription, beginning:
"Here lies one conquered that hath conquered kings."
Any sketch of his life, however brief, would be incomplete that contained no reference to the letter written by him to Queen Anne (the consort of James I.), in 1616, recommending the Lady Rebecca Rolfe to the royal favor.
He would "be guilty of the deadly poison of ingratitude," he wrote, if he failed to narrate what he and the colony at Jamestown owed to Pocahontas. He besought the queen's kindly consideration for the stranger just landed upon her shores, as due to Pocahontas's "great spirit, her desert, birth, want, and simplicity." His one call upon the wife of John Rolfe, Gentleman, was marked by profound respect on his part to one whom he accosted as "Lady Rebecca;" by profound emotion on hers.
John Smith's biography and epitaph are best summed up by one of his brothers-in-arms:
"What shall I saye, but thus we lost him that in all his proceedings made justice his first guide and experience his second, ever hating basenesse, sloth, pride, and indignitie more than any dangers; that never allowed more for himself than for his soldiers with him; that upon no danger would send them where he would not lead them himselfe; that would never see us want what he either had or could by any means get us; that would rather want than borrow, or starve than not pay; that loved action more than wordes, and hated falsehood and covetousnesse worse than death; whose adventures were our lives and whose losse our deaths."[Back to Contents]
WILLIAM HARVEY
(1578-1657)
William Harvey was born on April 1, 1578, at Folkestone, on the southern coast of Kent. He was the eldest of nine children; of the rest little more is known, than that several of the brothers were among the most eminent merchants in the city of London during the reigns of the two first Stuarts. His father, Thomas Harvey, followed no profession. He married Joanna Falke, at the age of twenty, and lived upon his own estate at Folkestone. This property devolved by inheritance upon his eldest son; and the greater part of it was eventually bequeathed by him to the college at which he was educated.