(Sir John), an eminent lawyer and poet, born about the year 1570. He first distinguished himself by his poem Nocte Teipsum on the Immortality of the Soul. He became attorney-general, and speaker of the house of commons in Ireland; and afterward was appointed lord chief justice of the court of King's Bench in England, but died before his installation, in 1626. He published many law tracts; but was esteemed more of a scholar and a wit than of a lawyer.

(John), a famous navigator in the 16th century, was born at Sandridge, near Dartmouth in Devonshire; and distinguished himself by making three voyages to the most northern parts of America, in order to discover a north-west passage to the East Indies; in which he discovered the Straits which bear his name. He afterwards performed five voyages to the East Indies; in the last of which he was slain in a desperate fight with some Japanese, near the coast of Malacca, on the 27th of December 1605. He wrote an account of his second voyage for the discovery of the north-west passage; a Voyage to the East-Indies; and other tracts.