William Strachey Esquire[1] | |
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| Born | 4 April 1572 Saffron Walden,Essex, England |
| Died | August 1621 (aged 49) |
| Burial place | St Giles' Church, Camberwell |
| Occupation(s) | Adventurer, chronicler, secretary |
| Notable work | True Reportory (1610),The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia (1619) |
| Spouse(s) | Frances Forster Dorothy (surname unknown) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parent(s) | William Strachey Mary Cooke |
| Family | John Strachey (geologist) (great-grandson) |
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William Strachey (4 April 1572 – buried 16 August 1621) was an English writer whose works are among the primary sources for the early history of theEnglish colonisation of North America. He is best remembered today as the eye-witness reporter of the 1609shipwreck on the uninhabited island ofBermuda of the colonial shipSea Venture, which was caught in ahurricane 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 theVirginia colony is thought by mostShakespearean scholars to have been a source for Shakespeare's playThe Tempest.
William Strachey, born 4 April 1572 inSaffron Walden,Essex, was the grandson of William Strachey (died 1587),[2] and the eldest son of William Strachey (died 1598) and Mary Cooke (died 1587),[3] the daughter of Henry Cooke,Merchant Taylor of London, by Anne Goodere, the daughter of Henry Goodere[4] and Jane Greene.[5] Strachey's maternal grandfather, Henry Cooke (died 1551), heldLesnes Abbey inKent; he was succeeded by his son, Edmund Cooke (died 1619), while his younger son, Richard Cooke, has been identified as the author ofDescription de Tous les Provinces de France.[6][7]
By his father's first marriage Strachey had three brothers and three sisters.[7] Strachey's mother died in 1587, and in August of that year Strachey's father married Elizabeth Brocket ofHertfordshire, by whom he had five daughters.[7][8]
Strachey was brought up on an estate purchased by his grandfather in the 1560s.[7] In 1588, at the age of sixteen, he enteredEmmanuel College, Cambridge,[9] but did not take a degree.[10] In 1605 he was atGray's Inn, but there is no evidence that he made the law his profession.[3][10] In 1602 he inherited his father's estate following a legal dispute with Elizabeth Brocket, his stepmother.[3]
Strachey wrote a sonnet,UponSejanus,[11] which was published in the 1605 edition of the 1603 playSejanus His Fall byBen Jonson.[8][12]
Strachey also kept a residence in London, where he regularly attended plays. He was a shareholder in theChildren of the Revels, a troupe of boy actors who performed 'in a converted room in the formerBlackfriars monastery',[8] as evidenced by his deposition in a lawsuit in 1606. According to Sisson:
In 1600Richard Burbage leased to [Henry] Evans his Blackfriars property, and the Children of the Revels underNathaniel Giles, with Evans as landlord and partner, occupied the theatre for some years. Evans assigned his rights in the property and the company in two stages, first one-half in sixths to [Edward] Kirkham, [Thomas] Kendall and [William] Rastell, and subsequently the second half in sixths toJohn Marston, William Strachey, and his own wife. There were later complications. But in 1606 William Strachey had a one-sixth share in theBlackfriars 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’sTempest. He gave evidence in the suit as ‘William Strachey, of Crowhurst, Surrey, gentleman, aged 34’ on 4 July 1606.[13]
Strachey became friends with the city's poets and playwrights, includingThomas Campion,[8]John Donne,[8]Ben Jonson,[8]Hugh Holland,John Marston,George Chapman, andMatthew Roydon, many of them members of the "Fraternity of Sireniacal Gentlemen" who met at theMermaid Tavern.[14]
By 1605 Strachey was in precarious financial circumstances[3] 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 toThomas Glover, the English ambassador toTurkey.[8] He travelled toConstantinople, but quarrelled with the ambassador and was dismissed in March 1607[3] and returned to England in June 1608.[15] He then decided to mend his fortunes in theNew World, and in 1609 purchased two shares in theVirginia Company[3] and sailed toVirginia on theSea Venture withSir Thomas Gates andSir George Somers in the summer of that year.
Strachey was a passenger aboard theflagshipSea Venture with the leaders of the expedition when the ship was blown off course by ahurricane. Leaking, and with its foundering imminent, the ship was run aground off the coast ofBermuda, accidentally beginning England's colonisation of that Atlanticarchipelago. 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.[16]
Strachey wrote an eloquent letter dated 15 July 1610, to an unnamed "Excellent Lady" in England about theSea Venture disaster, including an account of the precarious state of theJamestown 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 bySamuel Purchas as"A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir THOMAS GATES Knight". It is generally thought to be one of the sources forShakespeare'sThe Tempest because of certain verbal, plot and thematic similarities.[17]
Strachey's writings are among the few first-hand descriptions of Virginia in the period. His glossary of words of thePowhatan[18] is one of only two records of the language (the other beingCaptain John Smith's).[19]
Strachey remained at Jamestown for less than a year, but during that time he became the Secretary of the Colony after the drowning death ofMatthew 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.[20]
He then produced an extended manuscript about the Virginia colony,The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia, dedicating the first version toHenry 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 toFrancis Bacon and the other toSir Allen Apsley. It too was critical of theVirginia Company management of the colony, and Strachey failed to find a patron to publish his work, which was finally first published in 1849 by theHakluyt Society.
Strachey died of unknown causes in August 1621. The parish register ofSt Giles' Church, Camberwell, inSouthwark records his burial on 16 August 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'ssignet ring[21] was discovered in the ruins ofJamestown, identified by the family seal, aneagle.
On 9 June 1595 Strachey married Frances Forster,[3] 'the daughter of a prosperousSurrey family with political connections'.[10] Frances Forster was the daughter of William Forster and Elizabeth Draper (died 22 April 1605), widow of John Bowyer (died 10 October 1570) ofShepton Beauchamp,Somerset, and daughter of Robert Draper ofCamberwell,Surrey, Page of the Jewels toKing Henry VIII, by Elizabeth Fyfield.[22][23] Strachey lived in London while Frances remained at her father's estate inCrowhurst, Surrey.[10] They had two children, William Strachey (died 1635), born in March 1596/97, and Edmund Strachey, born in 1604.[3] Frances died before 1615, and at some time before that date Strachey married a widow whose first name was Dorothy, by whom he does not appear to have had any issue.[3]
Strachey's son, William, married three times, and died in 1635.[24]
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