Sir John, an eminent lawyer and poet, was born about the year 1570. He first distinguished himself by his poem on the Immortality of the Soul. He became attorney-general and speaker of the House of Commons in Ireland; and afterwards he 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 he was more esteemed as a scholar and a wit than as a lawyer.

John, a famous navigator in the sixteenth century, was born at Sandridge, near Dartmouth, in Devonshire, and distinguished himself by making three voyages to the northern parts of America, in order to discover a north-west passage to the East Indies, in which he discovered the straits which still bear his name. He afterwards performed five voyages to the East Indies, in the last of which he was slain in a desperate encounter 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 several other tracts.