THE
TRUE TRAVELS,
ADVENTURES,
AND
OBSERVATIONS
OF
Captaine John Smith,
In Europe, Asia, Affrica, and America, from Anno
Domini 1593. to 1629.
His Accidents and Sea-fights in the Straights; his Service
and Stratagems of warre in Hungaria, Transilvania, Wallachia, and
Moldavia, against the Turks, and Tartars; his three single combats
betwixt the Christain Armie and the Turkes.
Together with a continuation of his generall History of Virginia,
Summer-Iles, New England, and their proceedings, since 1624. to this
present 1629; as also of the new Plantations of the great
River of the Amazons, the Iles of St. Christopher, Mevis,
and Barbados in the West Indies.
All written by actual Authours, whose names
you shall finde along the History.
LONDON,
Printed by J.H. for Thomas Slater, and are to bee
sold at the Blew Bible in Greene Arbour. 1630.
[Concerning the date of 1629 in line nine of the title page, see p. 1n, below. In line twenty-two, "Mevis"
was a contemporary form of "Nevis."
The editor is grateful to the New York Public Library for permission to reproduce this title page.]
[Thomas Cecill's design marshals in a single shield John Smith's own three Turks' heads (see p. 15,
below) in the first and fourth quarters and what purport to be family coats of a Smith and a Rickards (or
Richards) family in the second and third quarters, respectively. The latter coats had already been shown
in impalements on the title page of the Generall Historie, engraved by John Barra, and on the map of Ould
Virginia, engraved by Robert Vaughan (see Volume II). Neither Barra nor Cecill is known to have dabbled
much in heraldry (Arthur M. Hind, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Descriptive
Catalogue with Introductions [Cambridge, 1952–1964], III, 31–47, 95–101). Vaughan, however, was "not
only a student of heraldry, but something of an antiquarian himself and one versed in the contemporary
mania for antiquarian fantasy which necessitated that peculiar combination of painstaking research and
romantic invention" he is known to have possessed (ibid., 49). It may consequently be assumed that the
impalement was his work, and that it was copied or adapted by Barra and Cecill.
On this assumption it may be surmised that Vaughan, working with John Guillim's A Display of
Heraldrie ... (London, 1610, reissued 1611), as well as with available manuscript sources, was able to find
one or more armigerous Smith families that had in common the use of three fleurs-de-lis in their arms (e. g.,
the Smyths of Theddlethorpe, Lincolnshire) and thus created a shield for John Smith's ancestors. In addition,
Vaughan appears to have added to the original shield the crest showing an ostrich with a horseshoe in its
beak — a Lancashire family of Smiths at one time used such a device.
As for the Rickards (or Richards) family of Yorkshire, both the three garbs and the talbot's-head crest
are on record, independently, but it is impossible to be certain of heraldic connections on such slim grounds.
We can say only that the quartering shown here is not to be found in any known surviving records, though
it may well have been accepted at the time as justifiable illustration of the family background of Captain
Smith. Such uses of heraldic devices were not unknown at the time, or even more recently (cf. Adm. William
Henry Smyth's eighteenth-century incorporation of the three Turks' heads in his own arms).
Smith's coat of arms is usually found on the verso of the title page to the True Travels, although it is
occasionally found on a separate leaf, as we have presented it here, perhaps because Cecill was late in
delivering the plate to the printer (see Joseph Sabin et al., eds., A Dictionary of Books Relating to America, XX
[New York, 1927–1928], 159). A reproduction of the coat of arms as it should look properly colored is printed
in Volume I of this edition.
The editor is grateful to the New York Public Library for permission to reproduce the coat of arms.]
