14 
A VOYAGE TO SPITZBERGEN 
It is impossible to withhold one’s admiration from 
these merchant-knights, who so nobly distinguished 
themselves in the peaceful errantry of commerce at a 
period when distances were comparatively formidable ; 
compassing the globe with their ships; striving, with 
courage unshaken by defeat, to force a passage, through 
the domains of perpetual frost and semi-perpetual night, 
into the fruitful and sunny regions of the East; and 
turning aside, as if for relaxation, from bolder ad¬ 
ventures, to uphold infant colonies in some remote 
wilderness. 
Thomas Smith, Kt. (late governour of the East Indian, Muscovia, French, and Sommer 
Island companies; treasurer for the Virginia plantation; prime undertaker (in the year 
1612) for that noble designe, the discoverie of the North-West passage; principall 
commissioner for the London expedition against the pirates, and for a voiage to the 
ryver Senega, upon the coast of Africa; one of the chief commissioners for the navie- 
roial, and sometime ambassador from the majestie of Great Britain to the emperour 
and great duke of Russia and Muscovia, &c.), who, havinge judiciously, conscion- 
ably, and with admirable facility, managed many difficult and weighty affairs to the 
honor and profit of this nation, rested from his labors the 4th day of Septem., 1625” 
(Atlience Oxonienses , vol. ii. col. 54). Some verses descriptive of the multitude and 
diversity of his enterprises are added to the above. Purchas, acknowledging his 
obligations to him, with high-flown allusions to Neptune and Xerxes, adds in a note, 
that the courts, consultations, &c.,- for the East Indies, Virginia, Summer Islands, 
North and North-west discoveries, Muscovia, &c., are kept at his house ( Pilgrimage , 
ed. of 1614, p. 744). 
The widow, and third wife, of Sir Thomas married Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, 
brother of the celebrated Sir Philip Sidney. — Hasted's Kent , vol. i. pp. 238, 412. 
In the Bodleian Catalogue, a book entitled “ Sir Thomas Smith’s Voyage and 
Entertainment in Russia” is attributed to him; and he is erroneously said to be the son 
of Sir Thomas Smith, who was Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth, and a distin¬ 
guished scholar and writer. Wood, in the “ Athenas,” mentions the book, but says it 
was published without his knowledge or consent. The Sir Thomas Smiths, of whom 
there were three distinguished about the same time, are often confounded. 
Sir Dudley Digges was also of a Kent family, and one remarkable during several 
generations for intellectual gifts and attainments. His grandfather was an able 
mathematician and writer; his father was also a distinguished mathematician and. 
author; his brother Leonard was a poet, orator, and linguist. Sir Dudley himself was 
an accomplished scholar, traveller, statesman, and author, a patriotic member of 
Parliament, and a princely merchant. He was one of the most active in bringing the 
Duke of Buckingham to account (for which he was committed to the Tower), and 
