2. William Symondes’ _Sermon_ before the London Company, April 25, 1609.[283] 3. _Nova Britannia: offeringe most excellent Fruites by Planting in Virginia._[284] 4. _A Good Speed to Virginia._ The dedicator is R. G., who “neither in person nor purse” is able to be a “partaker in the business.”[285] In 1610, appeared the following:— 1. W. Crashaw’s _Sermon_ before Lord Delaware on his leaving for Virginia, Feb. 21, 1609. 2. _A true and sincere declaration of the purpose and ends of the plantation begun in Virginia._[286] 3. A true declaration of the estate of the Colonie in Virginia.[287] 4. The mishaps of the first voyage and the wreck at Bermuda were celebrated in a little poem by R. Rich, one of the Company, called _Newes from Virginia_, which was printed in London in 1610.[288] William Strachey was not an actual observer of events in the colony earlier than May 23, 1610, when he first reached Jamestown. The incidents of his letter, July 15, 1610, giving an account of the wreck at Bermuda and subsequent events _(Purchas_, iv. 1734), must, so far as antecedent Virginia events go, have been derived from others.[289] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] In 1612 Strachey edited a collection of _Lawes Divine_ of the colony.[290] There are two MS. copies of his _Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia; expressing the Cosmographie and Comodities of the Country, together with the Manners and Customes of the People_,—one preserved in the British Museum among the Sloane Collection, and the other is among the Ashmolean MSS. at Oxford. They vary in no important respect. The former was the copy used by R. H. Major in editing it for the Hakluyt Society in 1849. This copy was dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon. In 1611 Lord Delaware’s little _Relation_ appeared in London.[291] In 1612 the Virginia Company, to thwart the evil intentions of the enemies of the colony, printed by authority a second part of _Nova Britannia_, called _The New Life of Virginia_. Its authorship is assigned to Robert Johnson.[292]