Source: Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Complete Works of John Smith (1580-1631) in Three Volumes. Published for The Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia by the University of North Carolina Press (1986), Vol. 1, pp. 137-130.
| June 2. | Smith sent his True Relation to England, and with it probably the Smith/Zúñiga map. |
| Sept. 10. | Smith elected president of the Virginia Council, after virtually completing his geographical and ethnological investigations. Shortly thereafter Captain Newport returned to Virginia with the second supply of colonists and brought a letter from the London Council that berated the colonists for their factiousness and "idle conceits." |
| c. Dec. 1. | Newport left on a return voyage to England, taking along Smith's "rude answer" to the London Council, as well as a "Mappe of the Bay and Rivers, with an annexed Relation of the Countries and Nations that inhabit them." |
| Jan. 16. | Sometime before this date Newport reached England. |
| Feb. 18. | Robert Johnson's Nova Britannia, a promotional pamphlet inspired by King James's grant of a new charter, was entered for publication. |
| May 5. | Capt. Samuel Argall sent out to test a shorter route to Virginia, under a company commission. |
| May 23. | Second charter signed; Sir Thomas Smythe appointed treasurer. Also in May, the new council issued instructions to Sir Thomas Gates, as governor of Virginia, naming Sir George Somers admiral of Virginia, Capt. John Smith and others to the local council, and assigning Smith to the command of a fort to be built at Cape Comfort. |
| June 8. | Gates's fleet got out to sea from Falmouth. |
| July 13. | Argall arrived in Jamestown, after 69 days at sea (the 1606 voyage had taken 128 days). |
| July 24. | Gates and Somers's flagship caught by a hurricane and driven on the Bermuda reefs. |
| Aug. 11-18. | The surviving ships reached Jamestown. Archer, Ratcliffe, and other old enemies of Smith's stirred up trouble over the new charter (though nobody had a copy of it) but let Smith finish his term as president. Not long after, Smith was incapacitated by a severe burn, and the rebellious clique gained the upper hand. George Percy, youngest brother of the earl of Northumberland, reluctantly agreed to serve as president, apparently even before Sept. 10. |
| Aug. 18. | Henry Hudson, a friend of Smith's, explored Delaware Bay, after picking up from where Smith's explorations had left off (approximately 37° 30' N lat.). From there he sailed N to explore the river now named after him. |
| Oct. 4. | Captain Ratcliffe wrote to Lord Salisbury that Smith "is sent home." |
| Nov. 9. | Sometime before this date, Argall arrived back in England. Meanwhile, in Virginia the "starving time" had set in. |
| Nov. 27. | In Bermuda, Gates and Somers determined to build boats to transport themselves to Virginia. |
| Nov. 30. | Sometime before this date, Smith arrived in England. |
| Dec. 14. | Lord De La Warr, Sir Thomas Smythe, and others entered for publication A True and Sincere Declaration of the Purpose of the Plantation Begun in Virginia to calm investors concerned over the loss of the flagship and to announce the immediate departure of a relief fleet commanded by De La Warr, now named lord governor and captain general for Virginia. |
| Feb. 21. | The Reverend William Crashaw, a Puritan, preached a farewell sermon before De La Warr, and on Apr. 1 the latter's fleet sailed from the Solent (Isle of Wight). |
| May 10. | Gates set sail from Bermuda for Virginia in two pinnaces built on the island. At about the same time, George Percy undertook for the first time to sail from Jamestown down to Old Point Comfort to see if the colonists there were still alive. |
| May 21. | Gates arrived with his men just in time to meet Percy, who was at Old Point Comfort, and two days later they were all reunited in Jamestown. |
| June 7. | Finding "not past sixtie" colonists alive, out of 500, Gates abandoned Jamestown and put the survivors and his own men aboard three pinnaces. A few miles downstream, however, they met De La Warr, who had entered the bay the day before, and in short order all went back to Jamestown. |
| June 10. | Sunday afternoon. De La Warr came ashore to take formal charge of the colony. Two days later he nominated his council, with William Strachey secretary and recorder. |
| c. Sept. 1. | De La Warr's ships returned to England, bearing Gates, Newport, and others, along with Strachey's account of the Bermuda misadventure, "A True Reportory of the Wracke, and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates." Important for John Smith was the highly probable return then of Richard Pots, an old Virginia colonist who had apparently acted as clerk of the council when Smith was president, and who was to take an important part in Smith's immediate plans, for the news of the colony's survival could not but give Smith a new purpose in life. |
| Nov. 8. | Sir Thomas Smythe, Richard Martin, secretary of the Virginia Company, and others entered for publication A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony in Virginia, a vindication based largely on Strachey's "Reportory." It is probable that the publication of this pamphlet was an immediate cause in Smith's completing plans for his own work, since Richard Pots, a knowledgeable acquaintance from Virginia now in England, and probably others, could help. |
| Nov. 9. | Sir George Somers died in Bermuda. |
| Dec. 14. | Richard Martin, secretary of the Virginia Company, apparently assailed by misgivings about Virginia, wrote privately to Strachey asking for an honest report of the colony. |
| Mar. 12. | Don Alonso de Velasco, Spanish ambassador to James I, sent to Philip III a manuscript map of NE North America (hereafter called the " Velasco map"), which was evidently based on various available maps, "plots," or sketches. |
| Mar. 26. | Smith appears to have employed the engraver William Hole shortly after this date. |
| Mar. 28. | De La Warr left Virginia, ill. Sir Thomas Dale had already sailed for Virginia with three ships bearing men, cattle, and supplies. |
| Nov. 1. | The earliest recorded performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest, in which he surely drew on William Strachey's "Reportory." |
| c. Dec. 18. | Shortly before this date Newport returned from Virginia with word of Gates's safe arrival there. Gates thereafter was employed by the East India Company. Argall seems to have replaced Newport in the Virginia service, and John Smith may have regarded this development as a favorable sign for himself. But by then William Hole presumably was at work on Smith's map, and William Crashaw and William Symonds may well have started to help Smith find a printer. |
| Mar. 12. | The third charter, an amplification of the 1609 charter inspired by the knowledge that Bermuda was accessible and habitable and by the fear that Spain might now occupy it, was signed. |
| May 1. | Robert Johnson's The New Life of Virginia was entered for publication. Containing no map, no sound information about the Indians, and no historical details, this appears to have been the type of promotional literature considered most appropriate by Smythe's clique. |
| Aug. 7. | Purchas's Pilgrimage was entered for publication. In it he stated that the Smith/ Hole map was in print, but implied that the accompanying text was not. |
| Mar. 24. | Smith's Map of Virginia and Proceedings must have been in print by this date, since the legal year 1612 ended then. This is corroborated in the second edition of Purchas's Pilgrimage, which states in a marginal note that Smith's manuscript was "since printed at Oxford." |
* This work was printed in two parts, with twin title pages. The present Introduction deals with the first part only.
2. Falconer Madan, Oxford Books: A Bibliography (Oxford, 1895),
I, v, 83-85.
3. See the Proceedings, 28-36, with its reference to Ralph Lane's
account of 1585-1586, from
Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries
of the English Nation
(London, 1598-1600), III, 255-260. Smith appropriated two Indian words recorded
by Lane:
"werowances" ("kings," as defined by Lane); and "crenepos" ("their
women," as explained by
Hakluyt in a marginal note).
4. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, III, 266-280.
5. See caption to the "Map of Ould Virginia," following
the first book of the Generall Historie,
in Vol. II.
6. For Strachey's debt to Smith, see S. G. Culliford, William
Strachey, 1572-1621 (Charlottesville,
Va., 1965).
7. Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage. Or Relations Of The World ... (London, 1613), title page.
8. Strachey's letter about the shipwreck on the reefs of Bermuda, "the
Ile of Divels," was
already known to Hakluyt, from whose estate Purchas finally retrieved it years
later.
9. See the Fragments, in Vol. III.
10. Invoice, dated Mar. 30, 1623, found by the editor among the
Ferrar Papers, Magdalene
College, Cambridge. See David B. Quinn's published version, "A List of
Books Purchased for the
Virginia Company," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, LXXVII
(1969), 347-360.
* The Julian calendar, ten days behind the Gregorian, is retained throughout.