Voyagers Tales | Page 4

his, Hugo Hakelute, sat in
Parliament as member for Leominster.
Richard Hakluyt, born about five years before the accession of Queen
Elizabeth, was a boy at Westminster School, when visits to a cousin in
the Middle Temple, also a Richard Hakluyt, first planted in him an
enthusiasm for the study of adventure towards a wider use and
knowledge of the globe we live upon. As a student at Christ Church,
Oxford, all his leisure was spent on the collection and reading of
accounts of voyage and adventure. He graduated as B. A. in 1574, as M.
A. in 1577, and lectured publicly upon geography, showing "both the
old imperfectly composed, and the new lately reformed maps, globes,
spheres, and other instruments of this art."
In 1582 Hakluyt, at the age of about twenty-nine, issued his first
publication: "Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America and
the Lands adjacent unto the same, made first of all by our Englishmen,
and afterwards by the Frenchmen and Bretons: and certain Notes of
Advertisements for Observations, necessary for such as shall hereafter
make the like Attempt." His researches had already made him the
personal friend of the famous sea captains of Elizabeth's reign. In 1583
he had taken orders, and went to Paris as chaplain to the English
ambassador, Sir Edward Stafford. From Paris he returned to England
for a short time, in 1584, and laid before the Queen a paper
recommending the plantation of unsettled parts of America. It was
called "A particular Discourse concerning Western Discoveries, written
in the year 1584, by Richard Hakluyt, of Oxford, at the request and
direction of the right worshipful Mr. Walter Raleigh, before the coming
home of his two barks." Raleigh and Hakluyt were within a year of the
same age.

To found a colonial empire in America by settling upon new lands, and
by dispossessing Spaniards, was one of the grand ideas of Walter
Raleigh, who obtained, on the 25th of March in that year, 1584, a
patent authorising him to search out and take possession of new lands
in the Western world. He then fitted out two ships, which left England
on the 27th of April, under the command of Philip Amadas and Arthur
Barlow. In June they had reached the West Indies, then they sailed
north by the coasts of Florida and Carolina, and they had with them two
natives when they returned to England in September, 1584. In
December Raleigh's patent was enlarged and confirmed, and presently
afterwards Raleigh was knighted.
Richard Hakluyt's paper, in aid of this beginning of the shaping of
another England in the New World, was for a long time lost. It was first
printed in 1877 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, among the Collections of
the Maine Historical Society. It won for its author a promise of the next
vacant prebend at Bristol; the vacancy came about a year later, and the
Rev. Richard Hakluyt was admitted to it in 1586.
Hakluyt remained about five years at Paris as Chaplain to the English
Embassy, and while there he caused the publication in 1586 of an
account by Laudonniere of voyages into Florida. This he also translated
and published, in London, in 1587, as "A Notable History containing
Four Voyages made by certain French Captains into Florida." In 1588
Hakluyt returned to England, and in the next year, 1589, he published
in one folio volume, "The Principal Navigations, Voyages, and
Discoveries of the English Nation." In April of the next year he became
rector of Witheringsett-cum-Brockford, in Suffolk. The full
development of his work appeared in three volumes folio in the years
1598, 1599, and 16OO, as "The Principal Navigations, Voyages,
Traffics, and Discoveries of the English Nation," the first of these
volumes differing materially from the volume that had appeared in
1589.
Hakluyt became, in May, 16O2, prebendary, and in 16O3 archdeacon
of Westminster. He was twice married, died about six months after
Shakespeare, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 26th of
November, 1616.
H. M.

VOYAGERS' TALES.

THE WORTHY ENTERPRISE OF JOHN FOX, AN ENGLISHMAN,
IN DELIVERING 266 CHRISTIANS OUT OF THE CAPTIVITY OF
THE TURKS AT ALEXANDRIA, THE 3RD OF JANUARY, 1577.
Among our merchants here in England, it is a common voyage to
traffic to Spain; whereunto a ship called the Three Half Moons, manned
with eight and thirty men, well fenced with munitions, the better to
encounter their enemies withal, and having wind and tide, set from
Portsmouth 1563, and bended her journey towards Seville, a city in
Spain, intending there to traffic with them. And falling near the Straits,
they perceived themselves to be beset round about with eight galleys of
the Turks, in such wise that there was no way for them to fly or to
escape away, but that either they