A.D. 1668
John Davies, of Camberwell, the storekeeper at Deptford dockyard, caused a chair to be made out of the remains of the ship, ‘The Golden Hind,’ in which Sir F. Drake accomplished his voyage round the world, which had been kept at Deptford until the timber decayed, and presented it to the Library. It stands now in the Picture Gallery, beside a chair which is said (but on what authority is not known) to have belonged to Henry VIII127, and bears a plate on which are inscribed some verses, in Latin and English, by Abraham Cowley. A good engraving of it is to be found in Lascelles’ and Storer’s Oxford, published in 1821128, and in the Life of Drake, published in 1828.
Notes
127 The style of moulding on the back seems to point to a somewhat later date.
128 A description, including a copy of the verses, and illustrated by a woodcut, is also to be found in vol. xxix. (1837) of the Mirror, p. 8, copied from the Nautical Magazine.