Pocahontas, while in London, missed meeting the famed Will Shakespeare, due to his death just a few weeks earlier, but she did attend a performance of his The Tempest at the Globe Theatre. Royalty met royalty when she was presented at court to King James I and Queen Anne.
Pocahontas was entertained by the bishop of London and visited by a drunken Ben Johnson. Through out this European whirlwind it is said this princess of the forest conducted herself like the daughter of a king. But it was in the midst of all this royal excitement, and dampness and London smog, that the situation changed, and for the worst.
Pocahontas' health suddenly began to change and worsen. She was moved to an estate in the country. It was there that a friend she had believed was dead and lost to her came to visit. It was the last time that Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, whatever their previous relationship had been or had not been, would ever meet.
In 1617, Pocahontas' husband, John Rolfe, received an appointment as secretary of the Virginia Colony. Soon they would return home to America. In March, the Rolfe family boarded the ship that would carry them back to Virginia. Ironically, the captain of this transport was none other than Captain Argall, the man who had once captured Pocahontas and held her prisoner. But soon Pocahontas was beyond any mortal means that could hold her prisoner or treat her either as royalty or as a savage.
While their ship still lay at anchor in the Thames River, Pocahontas became very ill. It was not long until the little girl who had helped the Virginia colonists, then grew to be the wife of one of them, was dead. Far from her beloved land in America, Pocahontas was buried on March 21, 1617. Her grave, on the bank of the Thames that flows still through London, went unmarked.
Recommended reading:
The New World/Pocahontas.
The New World or Disney's Pocahontas: Which One Got it Right?
Sources:
Barbour, Philip L., Pocahontas and Her World. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1970.
Hoxie, Frederick E., Editor. Encyclopedia of North American Indians: Native American History, Culture, and Life from Paleo-Indians to the Present. "Pocahontas (Matoaka)" by J. Frederick Fausz, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1996.
Mossiker, Frances. Pocahontas: The Life and the Legend. Knopf, New York, 1976.
Wallechinsky, David. Irving Wallace. The People's Almanac. Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York, 1975.
