He had come before he was fifty to regard himself as an old man, and to speak of his “aged endeavors.”  Where and how he lived in his later years, and with what surroundings and under what circumstances he died, there is no record.  That he had no settled home, and was in mean lodgings at the last, may be reasonably inferred.  There is a manuscript note on the fly-leaf of one of the original editions of “The Map of Virginia....” (Oxford, 1612), in ancient chirography, but which from its reference to Fuller could not have been written until more than thirty years after Smith’s death.  It says:  “When he was old he lived in London poor but kept up his spirits with the commemoration of his former actions and bravery.  He was buried in St. Sepulcher’s Church, as Fuller tells us, who has given us a line of his Ranting Epitaph.”

That seems to have been the tradition of the man, buoyantly supporting himself in the commemoration of his own achievements.  To the end his industrious and hopeful spirit sustained him, and in the last year of his life he was toiling on another compilation, and promised his readers a variety of actions and memorable observations which they shall “find with admiration in my History of the Sea, if God be pleased I live to finish it.”

He died on the 21 St of June, 1631, and the same day made his last will, to which he appended his mark, as he seems to have been too feeble to write his name.  In this he describes himself as “Captain John Smith of the parish of St. Sepulcher’s London Esquior.”  He commends his soul “into the hands of Almighty God, my maker, hoping through the merits of Christ Jesus my Redeemer to receive full remission of all my sins and to inherit a place in the everlasting kingdom”; his body he commits to the earth whence it came; and “of such worldly goods whereof it hath pleased God in his mercy to make me an unworthy receiver,” he bequeathes:  first, to Thomas Packer, Esq., one of his Majesty’s clerks of the Privy Seal, “all my houses, lands, tenantements and hereditaments whatsoever, situate lying and being in the parishes of Louthe and Great Carleton, in the county of Lincoln together with my coat of armes”; and charges him to pay certain legacies not exceeding the sum of eighty pounds, out of which he reserves to himself twenty pounds to be disposed of as he chooses in his lifetime.  The sum of twenty pounds is to be disbursed about the funeral.  To his most worthy friend, Sir Samuel Saltonstall Knight, he gives five pounds; to Morris Treadway, five pounds; to his sister Smith, the widow of his brother, ten pounds; to his cousin Steven Smith, and his sister, six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence between them; to Thomas Packer, Joane, his wife, and Eleanor, his daughter, ten pounds among them; to “Mr. Reynolds, the lay Mr of the Goldsmiths Hall, the sum of forty shillings”; to Thomas, the son of said Thomas Packer, “my trunk standing in my chamber at Sir Samuel Saltonstall’s house