While Pocahontas was in England her portrait was drawn and engraved. She is represented in the fashionable costume of the day. Beneath the picture were these words:
Matoaks als Rebecka, daughter to the mighty Prince Powhatan, Emperor of Attanough-kornouck als Virginia, converted and baptised in the Christian faith, and wife to the worshipful Mr. John Rolfe. Aged 21. Anno Domini 1616.
Pocahontas was destined never to return to America. She died at Gravesend on the eve of her departure for America, being about twenty-two years of age. The few words devoted in Smith's History to her death are quite characteristic of the times:
It pleased God at Gravesend to take this young lady to His mercy, where she made not more sorrow for her unexpected death than joy to the beholders to hear and see her make so religious and godly an end.
In the parish register at Gravesend is the following blundering entry, which could hardly have referred to any other than Pocahontas:
1616, May 2j, Rebecca Wrothe
wyff of Thomas Wroth gent.
a Virginian lady borne, here was buried
in ye channcell.
The child of Pocahontas was left in England in the care of Sir Lewis Stewkley, and afterwards transferred to the care of his uncle, Mr. Henry Rolfe, a London merchant. He was educated in England and afterwards returned to America. From him descended some of the most respectable families in Virginia. There is on record a petition signed by Pocahontas's son, Thomas Rolfe, and addressed to the authorities of the colony in 1641, praying to be allowed to go to the Indian country to visit his mother's sister, known among the white people as Cleopatra.