hose conquer'd
heads got by his Sword and Speare? Or shall I tell of his adventures
since, Done in Firginia, that large Continence: I-low that he subdu'd
Kings unto his yoke, And made those heathen flie, as wind doth smoke:
And made their Land, being of so large a Station, A habitation for our
Christian Nation: Where God is glorifi'd, their wants suppli'd, Which
else for necessaries might have di'd? But what avails his Conquest now
he lyes Inter'd in earth a prey for Wormes & Flies?

O may his soule in sweet Mizium sleepe, Untill the Keeper that all
soules doth keepe, Returne to judgement and that after thence, With
Angels he may have his recompence. Captaine John Smith, sometime
Governour of Firginia, and Admirall of New England.

This remarkable epitaph is such an autobiographical record as Smith
might have written himself. That it was engraved upon a tablet and set
up in this church rests entirely upon the authority of Stow. The present
pilgrim to the old church will find no memorial that Smith was buried
there, and will encounter besides incredulity of the tradition that he
ever rested there.

The old church of St. Sepulcher's, formerly at the confluence of Snow
Hill and the Old Bailey, now lifts its head far above the pompous
viaduct which spans the valley along which the Fleet Ditch once flowed.
All the registers of burial in the church were destroyed by the great
fire of 1666, which burnt down the edifice from floor to roof, leaving
only the walls and tower standing. Mr. Charles Deane, whose lively
interest in Smith led him recently to pay a visit to St. Sepulcher's,
speaks of it as the church "under the pavement of which the remains of
our hero were buried; but he was not able to see the stone placed over
those remains, as the floor of the church at that time was covered
with a carpet.... The epitaph to his memory, however, it is understood,
cannot now be deciphered upon the tablet,"--which he supposes to be the
one in Stow.

The existing tablet is a slab of bluish-black marble, which formerly
was in the chancel. That it in no way relates to Captain Smith a near
examination of it shows. This slab has an escutcheon which indicates
three heads, which a lively imagination may conceive to be those of
Moors, on a line in the upper left corner on the husband's side of a
shield, which is divided by a perpendicular line. As Smith had no wife,
this could not have been his cognizance. Nor are these his arms, which