John Pory (1572–1636) was an English politician, administrator, traveller and author of the Jacobean and Caroline eras;[1] the skilled linguist may have been the first news correspondent in English-language journalism.

In 1607 Pory travelled through France and the Low Countries, and was involved in a plan to introduce silkworm breeding to England.

He spent the years 1611–1616 travelling through Europe, to Italy and as far as Istanbul, where Pory was the secretary of English ambassador Sir Paul Pindar.

In 1619, Pory travelled to the barely decade old English colony in Virginia as secretary to the new governor, Sir George Yeardley.

[5] In London from the early 1620s on, Pory helped Nathaniel Butter, who was creating news periodicals for the English public.

[6] Headquartered at Butter's shop at the sign of the Pied Bull, Pory was a "correspondent" in the literal sense, who maintained exchanges of letters with the wide variety of prominent people he had met and cultivated in his earlier public career.

[7] In some respects, Pory was the first to do what many modern public figures do, moving among official posts, journalism, and positions in the private sector.

It is known that John Pory was a first cousin of Temperance Flowerdew, because John Pory writes in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton on 28 November 1618 of Sir George Yeardley, Temperance's husband, that "this George Yeardley hath married my Cousin German, and infinitely desires my company.

Christopher Layer (1531 – 19 June 1600), merchant, burgess of Norwich, and briefly a member of parliament, was another kinsman as the first cousin of his mother.

John Pory's maternal uncle Robert Ball was a fellow Cambridge alumni, also of Caius College.