's
Sejanus His Fall (1605) Strachey wrote a sonnet,
Upon Sejanus, which was published in the 1605 edition of the 1603 play
Sejanus His Fall by
Ben Jonson. Strachey also kept a residence in London, where he regularly attended plays. He was a shareholder in the
Children of the Revels, a troupe of boy actors who performed 'in a converted room in the former
Blackfriars monastery', Strachey became friends with the city's poets and playwrights, including
Thomas Campion, By 1605 Strachey was in precarious financial circumstances He then decided to mend his fortunes in the
New World, and in 1609 purchased two shares in the
Virginia Company Strachey wrote an eloquent letter dated 15 July 1610, to an unnamed "Excellent Lady" in England about the
Sea Venture disaster, including an account of the precarious state of the
Jamestown colony. Being critical of the management of the colony, it was suppressed by the Virginia Company. After the dissolution of the company it was published in 1625 by
Samuel Purchas as
"A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir THOMAS GATES Knight". It is generally thought to be one of the sources for
Shakespeare's
The Tempest because of certain verbal, plot and thematic similarities. Strachey's writings are among the few first-hand descriptions of Virginia in the period. His glossary of words of the
Powhatan is one of only two records of the language (the other being
Captain John Smith's).
Later life and death Strachey remained at Jamestown for less than a year, but during that time he became the Secretary of the Colony after the drowning death of
Matthew Scrivener in 1609. He returned to England probably in late 1611 and published a compilation of the colonial laws put in place by the governors. He then produced an extended manuscript about the Virginia colony,
The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia, dedicating the first version to
Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, in 1612. The manuscript included his eyewitness account of life in early Virginia, but borrowed heavily from the earlier work of Richard Willes,
James Rosier,
John Smith, and others. Strachey produced two more versions during the next six years, dedicating one to
Francis Bacon and the other to
Sir Allen Apsley. It too was critical of the
Virginia Company management of the colony, and Strachey failed to find a patron to publish his work, which was finally first published in 1849 by the
Hakluyt Society. Strachey died of unknown causes in August 1621. The parish register of
St Giles' Church, Camberwell, in
Southwark records his burial on 16 August 1621. He died in poverty, leaving this verse: In 1996, Strachey's
signet ring was discovered in the ruins of
Jamestown, identified by the family seal, an
eagle. ==Marriages and issue==