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THE GENERALL HISTORIE
OF
Virginia, New-England, and the Summer
Isles: with the names fo the Adventurers,
Planters, and Governours from their
first beginning Ano: 1584 to this
present 1624.
WITH THE PROCEDINGS OF THOSE SEVERALL COLONIES
and the Accidents that befell them in all their
Journyies and Discoveries.
Also the Maps and Descriptions of all those
Countryes, the Commodities, people
Government, Customes, and Religion
yet knowne.
DIVIDED INTO SIXE BOOKES.
By Captaine JOHN SMITH Sometymes Governour
in those Countryes & Admirall
of New England.
LONDON
Printed by I.D. and
I.H. for Michael
Sparkes.
1624.
[Engraver, John Barrà (so signed here; see Jan Barra, in the Biographical Directory). It can
hardly be accidental that Barra did a full-length engraving of Ludovick Stuart, duke of Richmond
and Lennox, also in 1624. It is not known whether the title page led to the portrait, or vice versa.
The upper third of the page, partially enclosing the title, is an imaginative map of the Atlantic
coast from modern North Carolina to the Castine Peninsula, Maine, on which are superimposed
medallion portraits of Queen Elizabeth, King James, and Prince Charles. The map makes little
attempt to be realistic cartographically, but three inscriptions attest to a broad plan: "Ould
Virginia" at the left, "Virginia Now Planted" at the top center, and "New England" at the right.
The whole design, in fact, points to some such basic source as the manuscript map of 1611 generally
known as the "Velasco Map" preserved in the Archivo General de Simancas (Valladolid), Spain
(see W. P. Cumming, R. A. Skelton, and D. B. Quinn, The Discovery of North America [New York,
1972], 264 and map 326). C[ape] Fear and "Hatorask" both appear on the southern extremity of
this map, with C[ape] Henry and "C[ape] Charels" (Charles) just above. Where there is no real
detail from that point on the Velasco map to C[ape] James (Cape Cod) and C[ape] Anne, Barra
has apparently taken advantage of later explorations and fancifully added "B[ay] la Ware" and
"Renolds I[sle]." (Samuel Argall anchored in and named the former in 1610; the latter may
represent Long Island, first explored by the Dutch soon after.) The place-names with which Barra
decorated his drawing probably pay honor to John Reynolds of the Goldsmiths' Company (a
friend of Smith's) and the duke or duchess of Richmond and Lennox, while repeating four names
from the map of New England: C[ape] Elizabeth, "Willowbys Il[e]s," "Pembroks B[ay]," and
"Fines Il[e]s." Just beyond the right margin of Barra's engraving lay the Mount Desert Island of
the Velasco map, so named by Samuel de Champlain in 1604.
As to the three medallions, it may be suggested that they were derived as follows: Queen
Elizabeth, very likely from Crispin van de Passe's engraving, in reverse, after Isaac Oliver's
drawing (see Arthur M. Hind, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 3 vols.
[Cambridge, 1952-1964], I, 282-283, plates 141-143); James I, from Francis Delaram's engraving
(ibid., II, 225, plate 128a); and Prince Charles, possibly inspired by a prototype of the 1625
anonymous engraving of the betrothal of Charles and Henrietta Maria designed for George
Marcelline's Epithalamium Gallo-Britannicum (ibid., II, 64-65, plate 34). The editor is indebted to
Mrs. Margery Corbett, co-editor with Michael Norton of Vol. III of Hind's Engraving, for queries
and suggestions throwing light on Barra's likely sources.
The title is set in a rectangular frame with Smith's two coats-of-arms: on the right, the device
granted him by Zsigmond Báthory; on the left, an unrecorded impalement combining three garbs
with three fleurs-de-lys, possibly for a Smith family of Lincolnshire or Gloucestershire. On either
side are the arms of Virginia (left) and New England (right), with Bermuda at the bottom (center).
Of these, the first mentioned appears "never to have been the subject of a grant of arms"; the
second "also seem[s] to be a creation of someone other than the King of Arms," since "these arms
do not appear to be on record"; while the third "are those of the Bermudas Company, ... [which]
became the basis of the arms for the colony of Bermuda" (letter to the editor, May 5, 1972, from
Dr. Conrad Swan, York Herald of Arms, College of Arms, London). An early reproduction of the
Virginia arms has the following subtitle and comment: "The Company of Merchants, called
Merchants of Virginia, Bermudas, or Summer-Hands, for (as I heare) all these additions are given them.
I know not the time of their incorporating, neither by whom their Armes, Supporters, and Crest
were granted, and therefore am compelled to leave them abruptly" (John Stow, The Survey of
London, enlarged ed. [London, 1633], 620; see also Peter Walne, "A Cote for Virginia," Virginia
Cavalcade, IX [Summer, 1959], 5-10).
Because of the reissues of the Generall Historie in 1625, 1626, 1627, 1631, and 1632, certain successive
alterations were made in the plate for the title page, resulting in "states" of the engravings,
as will be noted in Smith's various illustrative maps as well. These appear only from 1626 on, since
the 1625 issue kept the original page but added a printed title page with the date 1625. Six such
states are recognized:
- 1st state, date 1624, with Charles as Prince;
- 2nd state, date altered to 1626, with a crown added to Charles and with the superscription
altered to "Carolus Rex"; - 3rd state, date altered to 1627;
- 4th state, date altered to 1631;
- 5th state, date altered to 1632;
- 6th state, date 1632, and the medallion with Charles re-engraved.
The two states of the 1632 title page, pointing to two issues for that year, were first noticed
after the publication of the STC in 1926 (see Joseph Sabin et al., Bibliotheca Americana: A Dictionary
of Books Relating to America, from its Discovery to the Present Time, XX [New York, 1927], 227, 244-245).
The editor is grateful to the New York Public Library for permission to reproduce this title
bpage.]
[This inscription in Smith's handwriting is the sole surviving example of thirty or so letters he
inscribed in the copies of the Generall Historie that he presented to the various London livery companies.
His inscription to the Cordwainers is located at the front of the volume, facing the engraved
title page. According to Sabin's Dictionary, XX, 237, the Cordwainers' copy "afterwards came into
the possession of Robert Stayner Holford, Esq., of Dorchester House, London, passing later to his
son Sir George Lindsay Holford, and is mentioned in Seymour de Ricci's 'Book Collector's Guide,'
1921." For the past half century this copy has belonged to the Henry E. Huntington Library and
Art Gallery, San Marino, Calif., to which the editor is indebted for permission to reproduce it.]
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