William Strachey
| William Strachey | |
|---|---|
| Born | 4 April 1572 |
| Died | buried 21 June 1621 |
| Resting place | St Giles' Church, Camberwell |
| Spouse(s) | Frances Forster Dorothy (surname unknown) |
| Children | William Strachey Edmund Strachey |
| Parent(s) | William Strachey, Mary Cooke |
William Strachey (4 April 1572 – 21 June 1621 (buried)) was an English writer whose works are among the primary sources for the early history of the English colonisation of North America. He is best remembered today as the eye-witness reporter of the 1609 shipwreck on the uninhabited island of Bermuda of the colonial ship Sea Venture, which was caught in a hurricane 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 the Virginia colony is thought by most Shakespearean scholars to have been a source for Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
William Strachey, born 4 April 1572 in Saffron Walden, Essex, was the grandson of William Strachey (died 1587), and the eldest son of William Strachey (died 1598) and Mary Cooke (died 1587), the daughter of Henry Cooke, Merchant Taylor of London, by Anne Goodere, the daughter of Henry Goodere and Jane Greene. Strachey's maternal grandfather, Henry Cooke (died 1551), held Lesnes Abbey in Kent; he was succeeded by his son, Edmund Cooke (died 1619), while his younger son, Richard Cooke, has been identified as the author of Description de Tous les Provinces de France.
By his father's first marriage Strachey had three brothers and three sisters. Strachey's mother died in 1587, and in August of that year Strachey's father married Elizabeth Brocket of Hertfordshire, by whom he had five daughters.
Strachey was brought up on an estate purchased by his grandfather in the 1560s. In 1588, at the age of sixteen, he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but did not take a degree. In 1605 he was at Gray's Inn, but there is no evidence that he made the law his profession. In 1602 he inherited his father's estate following a legal dispute with Elizabeth Brocket, his stepmother.
Strachey wrote a sonnet, Upon Sejanus, which was published in the 1605 edition of the 1603 play Sejanus His Fall by Ben Jonson.
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