John Pory

John Pory
The title page of Pory's translation of Leo Africanus's A Geographical Historie of Africa (1600)
Born	1572 England
Died	1636 (aged 63–64) England
Occupation	Government administrator, traveller, author, journalist
Nationality	English
Period	1600–1636
Subject	Exploration, geography, travel

John Pory (1572–1636) was an English government administrator, traveller, and author of the Jacobean and Caroline eras; he is widely considered to have been the first news correspondent in English-language journalism.

Pory was educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; he earned his bachelor's degree in 1592 and his Masters in 1595. He was elected a member of Parliament from the borough of Bridgwater in 1605, and served until 1610. In 1607 Pory travelled through France and the Low Countries, and was involved in a plan to introduce silkworm breeding to England. He spent the years 1611–1616 travelling through Europe, to Italy and as far as Constantinople, where he was the secretary of English ambassador Sir Paul Pindar; for a portion of 1617 he served as the secretary to the English ambassador to Savoy, Sir Isaac Wake. Late in 1619, Pory travelled to the new English colony in Virginia as secretary to the governor, Sir George Yeardley. Pory spent the years 1619–1621 and 1623–1624 in Virginia; he served as the first Speaker of the Virginia Assembly, and explored Chesapeake Bay by boat in 1620. He returned to England and settled in London in 1624. Pory had accumulated a widespread acquaintance with influential people in a range of positions and locations, and maintained a vigorous letter-writing correspondence with them over the later years of his life. Contemporaries described him as being addicted to both gossip and alcohol.

Early in his career, around 1597, Pory became an associate and protégé of the geographer and author Richard Hakluyt; Hakluyt later termed Pory his "very honest, industrious, and learned friend". Pory was also a friend of Sir Robert Cotton, William Camden, Sir Dudley Carleton, and other members their circles. It was at Hakluyt's urging that Pory engaged in his first literary effort, a translation of a geographic work by Leo Africanus that was published as A Geographical Historie of Africa (1600). Pory also produced significant documents about the Jamestown colony in Virginia and the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.