THE TOWN OF WESTCHESTER. 409 



ingworth."* Family tradition also associates him with the Earl of Lei^ 

 cester, as the bearer of dispatches from Queen Elizabeth to the Earl 

 of Leicester, then commanding the English forces in the Low Countries. 

 This is somewhat confirmed by the following extract taken from a letter 

 of " Mr. Suntsey Walsyngham to the Earl of Leicester, December, 1585," 

 " My verie, good lord, your letters, sent by Mr. Hcnrie Astell and your 

 servante Underhill, I have received, Szc. b Upon Leicesters recall and return 

 to England, Underhill joined him ; and upon the Earl's decease, in Sept., 

 158S, he attached himself to the fortunes of the Earl of Essex, the un- 

 fortunate successor to Leicester, in Queen Elizabeth's favor. He ac- 

 companied that gallant nobleman in his successful attack upon Cadiz, 

 and shared his ill fortune in his fruitless expedition against Tyrme, the 

 rebel chief of the revolted clans of Ireland ; and, returning with the 

 Earl into England, by his attachment to that imprudent nobleman, sal- 

 lying into the streets of London in the petty insurrection, which cost 

 Essex his head, he was obliged to seek safety in Holland until the acces- 

 sion of King James, in 1603, when he applied for pardon and leave to 

 return to his native country ; but no interest of friends, we are assured, 

 could procure it. When the Rev. Mr. Robinson, with a number cf 

 other separatists, fled from England to Llolland, in 1603, he dwelt and 

 communed with them a number of years. The date of his death is un- 

 known. His son, the redoubtable Capt. John Underhill was born circ, 

 1600, and had early imbibed an ardent love of liberty, civic and religious, 

 by his service as a soldier under the illustrious Maurice of Nassau, 

 Prince of Orange, in the Low Countries. " He was strongly solicited 

 to go with Governor Carver, Elder "William Brewster and other worthies, 

 part of the Rev. John Robinson's church, to the settlement of Plymouth, 

 and had partly engaged with them as their chief military officer ; but, 

 Capt. Miles Standish, his brave fellow-soldier in the Low Countries, un- 

 dertaking the business, in 1620, he declined. How he joined Governor 

 Winthrop, does not appear ; but he came over to New England with him 

 "as captain of any militia force that might be employed or instituted, 

 as he had served under the great Dutch Prince in the war of the Nether- 

 lands,' in 1630; and soon after we find him disciplining the Boston 

 militia, where he was held in such high distinction that he was ap- 

 pointed one of the first deputies from Boston to the General Court, '" c 



u Camden's Brittania. 



b Leycsster Correspondence, Camden Soc. Edited by John Bruce, PS.A., MDCCCXLIV, 

 letter xvi pp. 34, 35. The letter conveyed by Underhill was probably that of the Earl to 

 Walsingham, dated 2Gth of Dec, 1585, p. 29, of above, setting forth the gratitude .of the 

 people of the Low Countries to Queen Elizabeth for her assistance <ic. 



e "Algerine Captive," by D. UndiSe Underhil, vol. i, 25, printed at Walpole, New Hamp- 

 shire, in 1T'j7. 



