106 Arctic and Antarctic Exploration [part i 
he became the first Governor of a new Company called 
the " North West Company/' formed with the special 
object of finding the passage to Cathay. Sir Thomas 
gathered round him as colleagues Sir Dudley Digges, 
Sir Francis Jones, Sir John Wolstenholme, Sir William 
Cockayne, Sir James Lancaster, Richard Wyche, Ralph 
Freeman, and William Stone, all names well known in 
Arctic geography. 
In 1615 Sir Thomas Smith was once more re-elected 
Governor of the East India Company. The enterprises 
of these Companies received his unceasing and laborious 
attention. Again in 1618 and again in 1620 he was 
re-elected. At length in July 162 1, he was allowed to 
retire, after serving the East India Company for 20 years. 
He resigned from weakness and old age, after having 
created and fully established the prosperity of a famous 
body which, in after years, was destined to found a great 
Empire. 
Sir Thomas Smith fostered and encouraged the 
scientific branch of a seaman's profession, and lectures 
on navigation were delivered at his house by Dr Hood, 
and by Edward Wright, of Gonville and Caius College, 
Cambridge, the introducer and adapter of Mercator's pro- 
jection. At the same time he was careful to ensure the 
safety of the journals of voyages sent out under his auspices 
by furnishing materials to Hakluyt and afterwards to 
Purchas. He was the perfect model of an enlightened 
and patriotic merchant adventurer. This great man died 
on the 4th September, 1625, and there is a monument 
to his memory in the south aisle of the church at Sutton- 
at-Hone, with a long inscription 1 . 
One of the most active among the colleagues of 
Sir Thomas Smith in the encouragement of Arctic enter- 
prise was Sir Dudley Digges. He came of a scientific 
family. His grandfather Leonard Digges was an accom- 
plished mathematician, architect, and surveyor, to whom 
1 A portrait of Sir Thomas Smith was engraved by Simon de Passe, 
dated 1617. The engraving is bound up in T. GrenvihVs copy of the 
Embassy to Russia and in a book called the Surgeon's Mate, which is dedi- 
cated to Sir Thomas. By his wife Sarah, daughter of William Blunt, who 
married secondly Robert Sidney Earl of Leicester, Sir Thomas had a son. 
Sir John Smith, who married a daughter of Sir Philip Sidney's "Stella" 
and his son Robert married Waller's " Sacharissa." 
