Sandys, George, was the youngest son of Dr. Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, and was born in the archiepiscopal palace of Bishopsthorpe, near York. His godfathers were George, Earl of Cumberland and William, Lord Ewer, and his godmother, Catherine, Countess of Huntington. In England, Sandys was one of the most distinguished men of letters of his time, and he has the honor of having produced the first book ever written on American soil, a translation of parts of Ovid and Vergil.
He was an unusually precocious student and entered Oxford University at the age of twelve. In 1610 he started on a two years' journey through the East, visiting Italy, Turkey, Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land. Upon his return to England, he published an account of his travels which he dedicated to "The Prince" as he always called Charles I, who had then been reigning about a year. This work became very popular and in 1673 reached a seventh edition.
Sandys and members of his family were connected with the Virginia Company in the capacity of stockholders during the whole of its existence. He was a friend of Southampton, who, upon his resignation as treasurer of Virginia in 1621, recommended his election to fill the vacant office. He was forthwith elected and later, on April of the same year, his election was confirmed. He shortly after went to the colony where there was granted him 1500 acres with fifty tenants for the maintenance of his office. Shortly after his arrival, he received a rhymed letter from his friend, Michael Drayton, the poet, urging him to continue his poetic and literary efforts, but truly Virginia at the time seemed hardly a fit dwelling for the muse. It was unable to raise enough food for its own subsistence and had to depend upon a disappointed and unwilling mother country. Education was also in a most rudimentary state, but in the autumn of 1621, £100 were subscribed by members of the ship's company of the "Royal James," an East Indiaman, to be expended for a church or free school. The latter was erected accordingly with a thousand acres for its maintenance and called the East India School after its donors. It was the first free school in the country. In the early part of the following year there was established, on account of the scattered population, which rendered it difficult for persons in the outlying districts to reach easily a court of law, a system of precinct courts, which afterwards took the form of county courts. It was in 1621 that the great dispute in England between King and commons began which threw the country into a ferment which led eventually to civil war. It happened that many prominent members of the Virginia Company took sides in this dispute with the people so that the ill will of the King became directed against the whole company to a degree most prejudicial to the colony. In addition to this the relations with the Indians were daily becoming more strained, and altogether the period was a stormy one for the colony. The Indian trouble culminated in the dreadful massacre of March 22, 1622, an account of which Sandys sent home to England. He also took an active part in the operations which the English set on foot against the red neighbors for the purpose of revenge and chastisement. The reputation of the treasurer seems to have been unassailed. In none of the old records is there to be found an adverse criticism of him and he unquestionably enjoyed the respect of all.
He spent some time in the colony but eventually returned to England, though the precise date is unknown, and was made a "Gentleman of the King's Privy Chamber." In 1636 he published a "Paraphrase upon the Psalms of David and upon the Hymns dispersed throughout the Old and New Testaments." Sandys was a fruitful author and after his return published a considerable volume of work which met with the hearty approval of the critics and literateurs of the day. Among others, Pope declared in his notes to the "Iliad" that "English poetry owed much of its present beauty" to Sandy's translations. He was very popular and enjoyed the friendship of the great authors of his time, and seems to have been noted as much for the sweetness of his character as for his scholarship. He spent the last years of his life at Boxley Abbey in Kent, the home of Gov. Wyatt, whose wife was Sandys' niece. Here he died in March, 1643.
