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18 Oct 1630: applied for Freemanship [MBCR, 1:80] 26 May 1631: John Reading of the inner Temple, London, to John Withrop, writing about the Will of Isaac Johnson. "You write you have sent it over, John Drake saythe he copied it for that purpose, but none can be heard of" [WP, 3:37]. 13 Mar 1633/34: Bequest in Will of Francis Drake of Esher, Surrey, to "John Drake, my Cozen William Drake's sonne, twenty poundes to be sent unto him in New England" [Waters, :580-581], COMMENTS: The John Drake of the third item above, and almost certainly of the other two, was son of William Drake of Wiscombe Park, Devonshire, a junior line of the prominent Drakes of Ashe of the same county. The letter of John Reading shows that John Drake had recently been in New England, at or shortly after the death of Isaac Johnson (September 1630); this John Drake, then, would have been in New England at the time of requesting freemanship in October 1630, but gone by the time the first group of freemen were admitted in May 1631. Presumably he returned on the Lyon in March 1630/31. He may have returned to New England shortly thereafter, or Francis Drake may simply have lost track of his cousin at this time. In any case, he is not the John Drake, who appears briefly in Taunton, Plymouth Colony, late in the 1630's, moves to Windsor, Connecticut, and dies there in 1659 [TAG, 63:193-206; 65:87-88]. Douglas Richarson has discovered that John Drake of Windsor derived from Hampton in Arden, Warwicksshire [Weis, :197]. SOURCES/DEFINITIONS:
1-The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633 (1995), by Robert Charles Anderson, F.A.S.G., I:581. |