Michael Drayton is the poet who has written the ode ‘To the Virginian Voyage’  urging all red-blooded Englishmen to leave the wimps behind and actively support the country’s settlement attempts in the New World. The first of twelve verses reads;

‘You brave heroic minds
Worthy your country’s name
That honour still pursue.
Go and subdue
Whilst loit’ring hinds
Lark here at home with shame’

Personally unashamed, Drayton never goes himself, eventually becomes Poet Laureate and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Sir Edward Lawrence of Steeple in Dorset, member of the London Virginia Company, dies this year. His memorial tablet is in St Michaels Church. On the tablet are the stars and stripes of the Washington family who married into the Lawrences. In years to come, George Washington, the first President of the newly independent United States, will use the stars and stripes design on the national flag.

In Virginia, though Jamestown remains its capital, the first settlement increasingly becomes just used as a place of safety for pigs and cattle. Henrico, on the other hand, with its healthier climate, is expanding. There’s a new hospice. Frame houses are going up fast, as shown here. Henrico also boasts the first brick -built church in North America. Its minister, the Reverend Alexander Whitaker, has Rolfe and Pocahontas as his parishioners and has recently christened their baby son Thomas in the church. Whitaker also blesses the Rolfes who are planning to sail to England on a business and holiday visit. Also blessing the pair is Chief Powatan who wants his daughter to personally meet God and King James there. He’s certain they both live in London.