Smith’s father hailed from Burridge, near Tiverton, Devon, but pursued a successful mercantile career in Exeter, where he served as mayor in 1567-8. When Smith himself became a freeman in the latter year, he paid the unusually large fine of £13 6s. 8d., a clear sign of his family’s wealth. During the next few years he rapidly built his own fortune through trade, warranting subsidy assessments of £20 in 1577, and £30 in 1581. An investor in Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s† 1583 colonizing voyage to North America, he underlined his prominence in Exeter three years later by becoming both mayor and governor of the city’s main trading body.
Smith spent £1,000 in 1584 rebuilding his Exeter townhouse, an early indication that he was investing his surplus capital in property. Two years later he was assessed for subsidy on the value of his lands rather than his goods, and for at least the next decade he continued to augment his estate with leases and piecemeal purchases. The precise scale of this activity is not known, but he probably acquired the vast bulk of the property later owned by his son Sir Nicholas* in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset, which included 25 manors or part-manors. By 1604 Smith was living outside the city in a mansion he built for himself at Madford.
In 1604 Smith was elected to serve for Exeter in the first Jacobean Parliament. While not a conspicuously active member of the corporation, he was now one of the most senior aldermen, a factor which presumably helped him to outpoll two rival candidates nominated by the commonalty.
In the second session Smith made no recorded speeches, but attracted eight personal nominations. As a member of the committee to examine the Spanish Company’s charter, appointed on 5 Nov. 1605, and reappointed on 28 Jan. 1606 after the interruption of business caused by the Gunpowder Plot, he was also named to consider the resulting bill for free trade to Spain, Portugal and France (10 February). His other bill committee nominations covered such topics as corporation grants and road maintenance (25 Jan., 6 Feb.); as an Exeter burgess he was entitled to scrutinize the bill against weir construction (7 February). Prowse was named to all but two of the same committees, and by now it was becoming clear that he, rather than Smith, was Exeter’s main spokesman in the Commons, despite the marked discrepancies in their wealth and status. Smith’s wages for this session are incompletely recorded.
Smith was presumably present when Parliament reassembled in the following autumn. On 26 Nov. 1606 he was appointed, as an Exeter burgess, to consider the bill, probably introduced by Prowse, to amend the 1606 Free Trade Act by making allowance for Exeter’s trading privileges. However, when the House resumed sitting after the Christmas recess, he was noted on 11 Feb. 1607 as being ‘extreme sick of the gout and not able to travel’, and was excused further attendance at that session ‘if he shall not thoroughly recover’. In the event, he was back in London in time to be named on 1 July to the bill committee on leather manufacture. However, his wages of £18 19s. for just 92 days’ attendance and other charges reflected his prolonged absence.
Smith’s health did not prevent him from serving as mayor of Exeter for a third time in 1607-8, when he led the city’s protests at plans for a national French Company, which would undermine Exeter’s own rights, notwithstanding the 1607 Free Trade Amendment Act that he had himself helped to obtain. Nevertheless, illness again kept him from playing a conspicuous role in the first parliamentary session of 1610. Although named on 20 Feb. to consider the bill to avoid the double payment of debts, he was granted leave to depart on 8 Mar., being ‘impotent of the gout’. Exeter’s corporation paid him £8 for 40 days service during this session, and a rather generous £22 for 110 days covering the session of autumn 1610, when he left no mark on the sparse surviving records.
Smith had been appointed an Exeter deputy lieutenant in 1608, but declined to serve, on the grounds that the warrant failed to describe him correctly as a knight. In 1611 the other deputies requested that he be reappointed with his proper title. However, this seems not to have happened, for when the commission was renewed in May 1614, the Privy Council left the lord chancellor (Thomas Egerton†) to decide whether Smith should be ‘added or left out’. This time his status probably was reaffirmed, as he held this office at the time of his death, though it is doubtful whether he took an active role.
Smith drew up his will on 22 Feb. 1619. He had already made over much of his property to his son Sir Nicholas, who was now simply designated as his residuary legatee. To his wife he bequeathed £2,000 in goods and money, on condition that she did not attempt to claim a larger share of his property under Exeter’s traditional inheritance customs. Other minor legacies came in total to a few hundred pounds. Smith died a month later, and was buried in Exeter Cathedral.