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THE BOY’S HAKLUYT

IN THE SAME SERIES

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

The Boy’s Catlin. My Life Among the Indians, by George Catlin. Edited by Mary Gay Humphreys. Illustrated. 12mo

net $1.50

The Boy’s Hakluyt. English Voyages of Adventure and Discovery, retold from Hakluyt by Edwin M. Bacon. Illustrated. 12mo

net $1.50

The Boy’s Drake. Edited by Edwin M. Bacon.

(In Preparation)

QUEEN ELIZABETH GOING ABOARD THE “GOLDEN HIND.”
From a painting by Frank Brangwyn.

THE
BOY’S HAKLUYT
ENGLISH VOYAGES OF
ADVENTURE AND DISCOVERY

BY

EDWIN M. BACON,

AUTHOR OF “HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES IN NEW ENGLAND,”

“LITERARY PILGRIMAGES IN NEW ENGLAND,” “THE CONNECTICUT RIVER

AND THE VALLEY OF THE CONNECTICUT,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

1910

Copyright 1908, 1909, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Published September, 1908

PREFACE

This account of Richard Hakluyt and his narratives of English exploration and adventure, from the earliest records to the establishment of the English colonies in North America, has been prepared at the instance of Edwin D. Mead, the fine mainspring of the far-reaching system of historical study widely known as the “Old South Work,” for the instruction of young folk, by engaging methods, in genuine American history. The purpose of the book was to draw the youth of to-day to a source of American history of first importance, and a work of eternal interest and value.

To this end I have sought to utilize the huge foolscap volumes of the Principal Navigations and to summarize or compress the narratives into a coherent story from the earliest adventures chiefly for conquest to those for discovery and expansion of trade, and finally for colonization, down to the settlement of Virginia. The American note is dominant throughout this animated story of daring, pluck, courage, genuine heroism, and splendid nerve displayed by the English captains of adventure and discovery North, East, and West.

I have endeavored also to recall Hakluyt’s significant work in his publications which preceded the Principal Navigations, and in his equally important personal efforts to forward American colonization by England, in order to re-present him in his true position, recognized by the earlier historians—that of a founder hand in hand with Raleigh of the English colonies, out of which developed the national life of the United States.

The dictum of William Robertson in his eighteenth century History of America (1777), that to Hakluyt England was more indebted for her American possessions “than to any other man of that age,” was sustained by Sir Clements Robert Markham, the English traveller, geographer, and historian, upon the occasion, in 1896, of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Hakluyt Society, of which Sir Clements was then the president, when he said: “Virtually Raleigh and Hakluyt were the founders of those colonies which eventually formed the United States. As Americans revere the name of Walter Raleigh, they should give an equal place to Richard Hakluyt.”

Sir Clements further observed: “Excepting, of course, Shakspere and the Dii Majores, there is no man of the age of Elizabeth to whom posterity owes a deeper debt of gratitude than to Richard Hakluyt, the saviour of the records of our explorers and discoverers by land and sea.”

Americans may well claim the pride of inheritance in these brave annals of adventure on untried seas and to unknown lands. Hakluyt’s quaint language ought not to be a hard nut to crack for the American boy when such rich meat is within.

E. M. B.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE BOY’S HAKLUYT

THE

BOY’S HAKLUYT

I
BEGINNINGS OF AMERICA

In the year 1582, a quarter of a century before the founding of Jamestown, in 1607, and thirty-eight years before the establishment of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in 1620, there appeared in London a pamphlet-volume entitled Divers Voyages touching the Discouerie of America and the Hands adaicent vnto the same, made first of all by our Englishmen and afterwards by the Frenchmen and Britons.

The direct and practical object of this little book was the promotion of English colonization on the American continent, where Spain at the South and France at the North then had firm foothold. Its mission was fully accomplished in giving the first effective impulse to the movements which led up to the ultimate establishment of the colonies that eventually formed the United States.

So it has a peculiar interest, especially for all Americans who would know their country, as a first source of the True History of the American Nation.

The name of the compiler was modestly veiled in the earlier impressions under the initials “R. H.” appended to an “Epistle Dedicatorie,” addressed to “Master Phillip Sydney, Esquire,” which served for a preface. In subsequent editions, however, the author declared himself as “Richard Hakluyt, Preacher.”

He might with propriety have added to this simple clerical distinction other and broader titles. For, worthy as they may have been and doubtless were, the least of his accomplishments were those of a cleric. Yet under thirty when Divers Voyages appeared, he had already attained an assured place among scholars for his learning in cosmography, or the science of geography, and was particularly known to English men of affairs as an authority on Western discovery.

Divers Voyages was skilfully designed for its special purpose. The various accounts then extant in print or in manuscript, giving particulars of the discovery of the whole of the coast of North America, were brought together and so artfully arranged as at once to enlighten his laggard countrymen and to inflame their ambition and their desire for gain. By way of introduction was presented an informing list of writers of “geographie with the yeare wherein they wrote,” beginning with 1300 and ending with 1580; and another of travellers “both by sea and by lande,” between the years 1178 and 1582, who also, for the most part, had written of their own “travayles” and voyages: Venetians, Genoese, Portuguese, Spaniards, and Frenchmen, as well as Englishmen. Next followed a note intended to show the “great probabilitie” by way of America of the much-sought-for Northwest Passage to India. Then came the “Epistle Dedicatorie” to “the right worshipfull and most vertuous gentleman” Master Sidney (not then knighted as Sir Philip Sidney), in which was detailed the compiler’s argument for the immediate colonization of the parts of North America claimed by England by right of first discovery made under her banners by the Cabots, with this pungent opening sentence, cleverly calculated to sting the English pride:

“I maruaile [marvel] not a little that since the first discouerie of America (which is nowe full fourescore and tenne yeeres) after so great conquests and plantings of the Spaniardes and Portingales [Portuguese] there that wee of Englande could neuer have the grace to set footing in such fertill and temperate places as are left as yet vnpossessed of them.”

And farther along this tingling snapper:

“Surely if there were in vs that desire to aduaunce the honour of our countrie which ought to bee in euery good man, wee woulde not all this while haue foreslowne [forborne] the possessing of those landes whiche of equitie and right appertaine vnto vs, as by the discourses that followe shall appeare more plainely.”

With these preliminaries the compiler first proceeded alluringly to exhibit “testimonies” of the Cabot discoveries of the mainland of North America for England a year before Columbus had sighted the continent.

This evidence comprised the letters-patent of King Henry the seventh issued to John Cabot and his three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Santius, authorizing the exploration of new and unknown regions, under date of the fifth of March, 1495/6, distinguished in American history as “the most ancient American state paper of England”; a “Note of Sebastian Gabotes voyage of Discouerie taken out of an old Chronicle written by Robert Fabian, sometime alderman of London”; a memorandum of “three sauage men which hee brought home and presented vnto the King”; and another reference to the Cabot voyages made by the Venetian historian, Giovanni Battista Ramusio, in the preface to one of his volumes of voyages and travels published in 1550–1563. Next followed, in the order named, a “Declaration” by Robert Thorne, a London merchant long resident in Seville, Spain, setting forth the discoveries made in the Indies for Portugal, and demonstrating to Henry the eighth of England that the northern parts of America remained for him to “take in hande,” which he failed to do; a “Booke” by Thorne, still in Seville, later prepared, in 1527, at the request of the British ambassador in Spain, being an “Information” on the same subject; the “Relation” of John Verazzano, the Florentine corsair, in the service of France, describing his voyage of discovery, made in 1524, along the eastern coast of America from about the present South Carolina to Newfoundland; an account of the discovery of Greenland and various phantom islands, with the coast of North America, by the brothers Zeno, Venetian navigators, in the late fourteenth century; and a report of the “true and last” discovery of Florida made by Captain John Ribault for France, in 1562.

The pamphlet closed with a chapter of practical instructions for intending colonists and an inviting list of commodities growing “in part of America not presently inhabited by any Christian from Florida northward.”

Its publication was a revelation to the English public. Before it appeared the people in general of that day had little knowledge of the accomplishments of either their own or foreign voyagers in discovery and for commercial advantage. Merchants engaged in foreign trade or ventures—and adventurous mariners, to be sure—kept themselves informed on what was going on and had gone on. But the information they collected was exclusively for the purposes of their own traffic. They were not interested in making it public. The real object, too, of many expeditions professing to aim at higher purposes, was, as John Winter Jones points out in his Introduction to the modern reprint of Divers Voyages, a gold-mine, or a treasure-laden galleon on the high seas. Hakluyt’s little book immediately gave a fresh turn to public interest. Its practical effect was the speedy forwarding of the expedition of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in the summer of 1583, the first of the English nation to carry people directly to erect a colony in the north countries of America. This was an unsuccessful attempt at an establishment at Newfoundland, and was followed by the loss of Sir Humphrey with the foundering of his cockle-shell of a ship on the return voyage.

Two years after the appearance of Divers Voyages a second work came from the same hand for the same general object.

This was a work of broader scope and of larger significance. It was prepared not for the press but for private and confidential circulation. It was, in effect, a state paper, marshalling arguments in behalf of a specific policy, and was intended expressly for the eye of queen Elizabeth, and her principal advisers. It exhibited the political, commercial, and religious advantages to be derived by England from American colonization at a critical juncture of affairs. The Catholic Philip the second of Spain was now aiming at the “suppression of heretics throughout the world,” and Elizabeth of England was his main object of insidious attack as “the principal of the princes of the reformed religion.” The particular purpose of the work was to enlist the throne in the large projects formed by Walter Raleigh in continuation of the scheme of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (Raleigh’s half-brother) after the lamentable fate of that chivalrous gentleman.

Only three or four copies of this paper are supposed to have been made. Its existence was unknown to the historians for more than two and a half centuries. The credit for bringing it to public light and for its reproduction in print was due to American bibliophiles and scholars.

The discovery of it came about in this wise. In the eighteen fifties a copy of a “Hakluyt Manuscript” appeared at an auction sale of a famous private library in London, and was bought by a shrewd and indefatigable collector of rare Americana, Henry Stevens of Vermont, at that time resident in London. On a blank leaf of the manuscript the purchaser found this pencilled memorandum, evidently made by the owner of the library, Lord Valentia:

“This unpublished Manuscript of Hakluyt is extremely rare. I procured it from the family of Sir Peter Thomson. The editors of the last edition [meaning the collection of Hakluyt’s works published in 1809–1812] would have given any money for it had it been known to have existed.”

Sir Peter Thomson was an eighteenth century collector of choice books, manuscripts, and literary curiosities. After his death in 1770, his collection went to the hammer. Here the trace ends, for how Sir Peter got the manuscript is not disclosed. Mr. Stevens endeavored to find a permanent place for the precious thing in the library of some American historical society or in the British Museum. At length, these endeavors failing, after two or three years, he disposed of it in England to Sir Thomas Phillips, another noteworthy collector, whose library at Thirlestane House, Cheltenham, became a storehouse of historical treasure. Here it lay till 1868, when it was practically rediscovered by another American—the learned Reverend Doctor Leonard Woods, fourth president of Bowdoin College, in Maine. President Woods was at that time in England searching for certain papers of Sir Fernandino Gorges, the founder of Maine, and in this quest he visited Thirlestane House. He was one of those whose attention had been called to the manuscript by Mr. Stevens when it was in the latter’s possession. But then the Maine scholar did not fully comprehend its nature. As soon, however, as he had examined it at Thirlestane House he recognized its historical worth. Thereupon he caused an exact transcript to be made, and printed it for the first time in the Maine Historical Society’s Collections for 1877.

The thesis originally bore the caption Mr. Rawley’s Voyage; but subsequently a title more explicitly defining its character was affixed to the copy from which the print is made; and this title in turn has been reduced for popular service to A Discourse on Western Planting.

This “Discourse” boldly set forth the bearings of Raleigh’s enterprise upon the power of Spain (with which war was ultimately proclaimed). If pursued at once it would be “a great bridle of the Indies of the King of Spain,” and stay him from “flowing over all the face” of the firm land of America. Raleigh’s plan contemplated a flank movement upon Spain in the seas of the West Indies and the Spanish Main, while England was preparing for intervention in the Netherlands. From her American possessions, in the wealth which her treasure-ships brought thence, Spain was deriving the sinews of her strength. With this wealth she was enabled to support her armies in Europe, build and equip fleets, keep alive dissensions, bribe, in her interests, “great men and whole states.” Her power in her American possessions Raleigh would break. English colonies planted on the North American continent would be in position to attack her at a vulnerable point and arrest her treasure-ships. A surprising weakness of her defences in Spanish America, through the withdrawal of her soldiers to maintain her armies in the Netherlands, had been discovered by Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake in recent voyages. In this unprotected condition of the region was found a powerful inducement to English colonization as now proposed.

The necessity of “speedy planting in divers fit places” upon these “lucky western discoveries” was also urged to prevent their being occupied by other nations which now had “the like intentions.” The queen of England’s title to America, “at least to so much as is from Florida to the circle artic,” by virtue of the Cabot discoveries, was reasserted as “more lawful and right than the Spaniard’s or any other prince’s.” The various “testimonies” to this claim were again enumerated. Stress also was again laid upon the “probability of the easy and quick finding of the Northwest Passage.” The value to England, through her opening of the West, in the yield to her of “all the commodities of Europe, Africa, and Asia,” as far as her adventurers might travel, and in the supply of the wants of England’s decayed trades, was dwelt upon. It was shown that, with the possession of this region planted by Englishmen, England would obtain every material for creating great navies—goodly timber for building ships, trees for masts, pitch, tar, and hemp—all for “no price.” Thus it was apparent “how easy a matter it may be to this realm swarming at this day with valiant youths rusting and hurtful for lack of employment, and having good makers of cable and all sorts of cordage, and the best and most cunning shipwrights of the world, to be lords of all those seas, and to spoil Philip’s Indian navy, and to deprive him of yearly passage of his treasure into Europe.” As for the religious argument, the zealous Protestant advocate reasoned that by planting in America from England the “glory of the gospel” would be enlarged, “sincere religion” be advanced therein, and a safe and sure place be provided “to receive people from all parts of the world that are forced to flee for the truth of God’s word.”

The first copy of this illuminating Discourse was delivered to the queen by Hakluyt in person, in August, shortly before the return of Raleigh’s “twoo barkes.” Another copy was given to Elizabeth’s chief secretary, Walsingham; and a third, it is believed, to Sir Philip Sidney.

FAC-SIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE OF “DIVERS VOYAGES.”
From the copy in the New York Public Library (Lenox Building).

Like Divers Voyages it had a signal effect. The two barks had been sent out in April, within a month from the issue of a patent to Raleigh, as a preliminary expedition, under two experienced navigators, to reconnoitre the southern coast above Florida and report. They were back in September, bringing glowing accounts of the region visited—the islands of Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds—together with report of their having taken formal possession of the country for the queen of England, and, as tangible evidence, two tawny natives of the wilderness. With this happy outcome the Hakluyt Discourse clinched the matter, and Raleigh’s policy was adopted. Elizabeth immediately bestowed upon the region the name of Virginia, in token of her state of life as a virgin queen; Raleigh was knighted for his valour and enterprise; Parliament confirmed his patent of discovery; and in April following, 1585, his first colony of one hundred and eight persons sailed from Plymouth in a fleet of seven vessels and landed at Roanoke.

From that time for twenty years, till the forfeiture of Elizabeth’s grant by the attainder of James, in 1603, all that was done for American colonization by the English race was under Raleigh’s title, and with every step Hakluyt was repeatedly contributing informing literature to the cause to keep aflame the now aroused spirit of adventure.

In 1586, then in Paris, he had published, at his own expense, a manuscript account of Florida, written after the explorations of the French navigators Ribault and Laudonnière, in 1562–1564, and the attempted planting of Huguenot colonies there, ending tragically in a massacre by Spaniards. This manuscript he had come upon in archives, where it had lain hidden for above twenty years, “suppressed,” as he averred, “by the malice of some too much affectioned to the Spanish cause.” The narrative was brought out in French, edited by a friend and fellow scholar, Martin Basanière, a professor of mathematics, and dedicated by the editor to Raleigh with high praise for his efforts to open the Western country. The following year Hakluyt issued in London an English translation of this book under the enticing title, A Notable Historie containing four Voyages made by certayne French captaynes into Florida, wherein the Great Riches and Fruitfulness of the country with the Maners of the people, hitherto concealed, are brought to light; and to this edition he prefixed his own “Epistle Dedicatorie” to Raleigh, encouraging him, undismayed by previous failure, in the good work of Virginia colonization, which must ultimately prosper as these French captains’ exposition of the advantages and resources of the region demonstrated.

The same year, 1587, again in Paris, he published, also dedicated to Raleigh, and accompanied by a rare map, a revised edition in Latin of De Orbe Novo, the work of the Italian historian, Peter Martyr, giving the history of the first thirty years of American discovery.

Next, in 1589, appeared the first volume of the magnum opus of our author, under the general title of The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoueries of the English Nation made by Sea or over Land to the most remote and farthest distant Quarters of the Earth at any time within the compasse of these 1500 years—an elaborate work of which the Divers Voyages was the germ, having the same direct object in view. Its scheme embraced a collection, in three volumes, of narratives and records, in the original, of voyages and discoveries made by Englishmen from earliest times to the compiler’s day, sprinkled with accounts of the more important explorations for foreign nations having relation to those for England. The initial volume opened with an extended “Epistle Dedicatorie” addressed to Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen’s chief secretary, and a more detailed “Preface to the Favourable Reader.” It included the main part of the Divers Voyages.

Nine years later, in 1598, the first volume of a second edition, revised and enlarged, to include voyages made “within the compasse of these 1600 yeares,” instead of fifteen hundred, made its appearance. The second volume of this edition followed the next year, 1599, and the last in 1600. They were of large size, fools-cap folio, and contained altogether the impressive number of five hundred and seventeen separate narratives of adventures by Englishmen from the time of King Arthur to and through Elizabeth’s reign.

Extended “Epistles Dedicatorie” were also prefixed to each of these volumes. That to the first was addressed to Charles Howard, the vanquisher of the Spanish Armada, 1588. Both of those to the second and third were to Sir Robert Cecil, Walsingham’s successor in the chief secretaryship, and afterward the Earl of Salisbury.

With the completion of the third volume Hakluyt’s work of research by no means ended. It was continued untiringly till the close of his life, and sufficient material was left by him in manuscript to constitute a fourth volume. This material passed to the hands of Samuel Purchas, the author of Purchas his Pilgrimages, or Relations of the World, etc., 1613, who utilized it, together with matter from the Principall Navigations, in a work of four volumes, published in 1625, under the title of Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes: containing a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Land Travels by Englishmen and Others. Afterward the Purchas his Pilgrimages was added as a fifth volume to the set. The combined work became most popularly known as Purchas’s Pilgrims, and was treated by some of the early historians as the first source of American history.

Nor did Hakluyt’s publications of an important nature and with the same general object—the fostering of naval enterprise generally and of American colonization in particular—end with the issue of his magnum opus. In 1601 he brought out, under the title of The Discoveries of the World, an English translation of a treatise by a Portuguese, Antonio Galvano. After that came an English version of Peter Martyr under this taking title: The Historie of the West Indies: Containing the Actes and Aduentures of the Spaniards, which have conquered and peopled those Countries, inriched with varietie of pleasant relation of the Manners, Ceremonies, Lawes, Governments, and Warres of the Indians: Published in Latin by Mr. Hakluyt and translated into English by M. Lok, Gent. This appeared a short time before the permanent colonization was effected, and was evidently timed to stimulate that movement.

Next, in 1609, he produced a translation from the Portuguese of an account of De Soto’s discoveries in 1539–1543, with a description of Florida and its riches, designed to encourage and foster the Virginia colony. To this Hakluyt gave the English title Virginia Richly Valued by the description of the mainland of Florida her next neighbour. The dedication was addressed to the “Right Worshipfull Counsellors and others the cheerefull aduenturors for the aduancement of that Christian and noble plantation of Virginia,” and the booklet was commended to them as a “worke ... though small in shew yet great in substance,” yielding much light to the enterprise in which they were with him concerned, whether it was desired “to know the present and future commodities of our countrie, or the qualities and conditions of the Inhabitants, or what course is best to be taken with them.”

Two years later, in 1611, he issued a second edition, for the combined purpose of buoying up the spirits of the young colony, now disheartened by much suffering, and of procuring additional aid for it at home. This appeared with a new and more alluring title, in which particular stress was laid upon the wealth of gold, silver, and other precious things supposed to exist in the region, then believed to be the richest in the world: The worthie and famous historie of the travails, discovery and conquest of that great continent of Terra Florida being lively paralleled with that of our own now inhabited Virginia. As also the commodities of said country with divers and excellent and rich mynes of golde, silver, and other metals etc. which cannot but give us a great and exceeding hope for our Virginia being so neere to one continent etc.

This was fittingly Hakluyt’s last published work.

II
RICHARD HAKLUYT THE MAN

Beyond the bare data of his birth and antecedents the story of Richard Hakluyt’s life is gathered largely from his own writings, found for the most part in shreds of autobiography running through the several extended “Epistles Dedicatorie” introducing his published volumes. It is a winsome and an inspiriting story of a man of action behind the scenes of great performances rather than in the forefront: of a singularly modest man not forth-pressing among his contemporaries, yet ranking in great accomplishments with the best of “Queen Elizabeth’s men.”

Even the exact place and date of his birth are not stated by any of his biographers. All that appears to be definitely fixed is that he was born near London about the year 1553. That was the year that Edmund Spenser was born; one year after the birth of Sir Walter Raleigh, and one year before the birth of Sir Philip Sidney, both of whom were to become his confrères in schemes of American colonization. He was five years old when Elizabeth came to the throne. Eleven years after his birth Shakspere was born, and he died the same year that Shakspere died. Thus we have the chronology of his life, 1553–1616, his active career extending through the blossom and the bloom of the dazzling Elizabethan period.

Richard Hakluyt was of an ancient Hertfordshire family, dating back in that historic county to the thirteenth century. The family seat was at Yatton, or Eyton, not far from the old town of Leominster. They were of Welsh extraction, and our cosmographer may have indulged a personal pride in the legend of “the most ancient discovery of the West Indies,” made by a Welshman in the twelfth century, three hundred years before Columbus. Hakluyts appear to have been early preferred for public station in Hertfordshire. The name (then generally spelled Hackluit) is found in the lists of high sheriffs for the county from the reign of Edward the second to Henry the eighth. In the second year of Henry the fourth Leonard Hackluit, knight, was sheriff. Walter Hakelut was knighted in the thirty-fourth year of Edward the first. Others of the name are seen among early members of Parliament. Thomas Hakeluyt was chancellor of the diocese of Hertford in 1349, in the latter part of Edward the third’s reign. Richard Hakluyt of Yatton, afterward of London, an elder cousin of our Richard, was a cosmographer before him, and esteemed in his time “as well by some principal ministers of state as by several most noted persons among the mercantile part of the kingdom, as a great encourager of navigation and improvement of trade, art, and manufactures.”

Our Richard Hakluyt was the second of four brothers, all of whom were liberally educated. The eldest, Thomas, was trained at the Westminster School and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a celebrated physician. Richard followed Thomas at the Westminster School when he was fourteen years old, being elected one of the queen’s scholars to that “fruitfull nurserie,” as he terms it. He remained at Westminster for six years and then passed up to Christ College, Oxford. While a schoolboy the love of geography and maritime discovery was implanted in him by his cousin Richard, and so agreeably that he determined to make the pursuit of these branches of science his life-avocation. How this came about let him relate in his own quaint language, translated, for more comfortable reading, into modern English.

“I do remember that being a youth and one of her Majesty’s scholars at Westminster, that fruitful nursery, it was my hap to visit the chamber of M. Richard Hakluyt, my cousin, a Gentleman of the Middle Temple, well known unto you, at a time when I found lying open upon his board certain books of Cosmography with an universal Map. He seeing me somewhat curious in the view thereof began to instruct my ignorance by shewing me the division of the earth into three parts after the old account, and then according to the latter & better distribution, into more: he pointed with his wand to all the known Seas, Gulfs, Bays, Straights, Capes, Rivers, Empires, Kingdoms, Dukedoms, and Territories of each part; with declaration also of their special commodities & particular wants, which by the benefit of traffic & intercourse of merchants, are plentifully supplied. From the Map he brought me to the Bible, and turning to the 107 Psalm, directed me to the 23 & 24 verses, where I read, that they which go down to the sea in ships, and occupy by the great waters, they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep, &c. Which words of the Prophet together with my cousin’s discourse (things of high and rare delight to my young nature) took in me so deep an impression, that I constantly resolved, if ever I were preferred to the University, where better time and more convenient place might be ministered for their studies, would by God’s assistance prosecute that knowledge and kind of literature, the doors of which whereof (after a sort) were so happily opened before me.”

Hakluyt entered Oxford in 1570, and took the degree of bachelor of arts in 1574 and master of arts in 1577. While diligently and faithfully pursuing the regular college course, true to his boyhood resolution he devoted all his spare time to his self imposed studies. He became so proficient in them that after taking his master’s degree he was chosen to read “public lectures” on the science of cosmography and navigation. The lectures were delivered presumably in London and with much satisfaction to his hearers, among whom we may be sure were found master mariners and common seamen, as his relation proceeds:

“When not long after I was removed to Christ-Church in Oxford, my exercise of duty first performed, I fell to my intended course, and by degrees read over whatsoever printed and written discoveries and voyages I found extant either in the Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portugal [Portuguese], French, or English languages, and in my public lectures was the first that produced and shewed both the old and imperfectly composed, and the new lately reformed Maps, Globes, Spheres, and other instruments of this Art for demonstration in the common schools, to the singular pleasure and general contentment of my auditory.”

Possibly at these lectures, certainly soon after, he was advocating with much earnestness the pressing need of popular technical education to produce informed and skilful mariners, and this he continued persistently to urge in all his after writings. He would have had established in London a lectureship, or a school of nautical crafts, from which English seamen might be graduated complete navigators. To this end he dwelt much upon the advantages of the navigators of rival nations, gained largely through their scientific training. At that time Spain was maintaining in Seville, at the “Contractation House,” or Exchange, a “Learned Reader” in the art of navigation and a board of examiners, of which the reader was a member, and no man in Spain could obtain the charge of a ship for the Indies till he had attended the reader’s course and had passed the examining board. A century earlier the “hero nation” of Portugal had established a school of navigation, instituted by that heroic figure in maritime discovery, Prince Henry, surnamed “The Navigator.” Despite, however, the force of Hakluyt’s sound arguments, and the endorsement of his proposition by such seasoned mariners as Sir Francis Drake and by various men of affairs, the lectureship never was founded, greatly to his regret.

When Hakluyt began his studies in cosmography systematically the only English work at his hand touching the subject was the Historie of Travayle by Richard Eden, dating from 1555. This was the first work of its kind produced in England, and a new edition was brought out while Hakluyt was a student at Oxford. Although it was a classic from a scholarly Englishman, it presented only a limited view of maritime discovery. Consequently the young student was obliged to pursue his investigations chiefly in various foreign works, and among manuscripts deposited in private libraries or collections. He had not progressed far before he had become impressed with the backwardness of England in Western occupation since the discovery of the North American continent under her auspices in 1497 and 1498. Great deeds had been performed by intrepid English explorers to the North and Northeast, and English commerce had been advanced in the rich regions of the East; but on the Western continent no further attempt of moment toward exploration or settlement had been made by Englishmen from the finish of Henry the seventh’s reign to Elizabeth’s time. Meanwhile other nations had established foothold in these “fair and fruitful parts,” to England’s disadvantage. Thus Hakluyt came clearly to see that maritime traffic united with American colonization must be the means that England should adopt, without further delay, if she were to improve the condition of her people and become a naval power in the world.

Imbued with these convictions he early set out, perhaps while still delivering the “Public Lectures,” definitely to promote this policy with voice and pen. Early he is found in close touch with men leading in state affairs and in bold enterprises. He is much in correspondence with Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen’s chief secretary. He gets points from Sir Francis Drake after that great navigator’s return, in 1580, from the first circumnavigation of the globe by an Englishman, loaded with treasure, the spoil of Spanish harbours on the Pacific, and crowned with honours for the discovery of California for the English and its occupation as “New Albion.” He has intimate intercourse with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, to whom, in 1578, Elizabeth had given her letters patent to discover and to colonize “remote, heathen, and barbarous lands”—the first grant of the kind ever made by an English sovereign,—and, as we have seen, prepares his first book, Divers Voyages, in aid of Sir Humphrey’s project. Walter Raleigh, Gilbert’s half-brother and associate, who had known Hakluyt and was conversant with his studies in cosmography when he was at college, became his patron. Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicates the Divers Voyages, had been his fellow-student at Oxford.

Hakluyt planned to accompany Gilbert’s fatal expedition of 1583, but before its departure he was appointed chaplain to Sir Edward Stafford, the queen’s ambassador to Paris. This preferment evidently came to him directly through his interest in nautical affairs. Those who obtained it for him believed that his services to the cause of Western discoveries and colonization would then be most valuable from that post of observation and influence. Walsingham expected him to make diligent enquiry of “such things as may yield any light unto our Western discoveries,” and he justified this hope by undertaking shrewdly to collect information of the movements of the Spanish and as well the French, and to recommend measures for the furtherance of the cause which he had most at heart. No sooner was he established at Paris than he became absorbed in this special mission, and it continued almost his sole occupation while he remained with the embassy, which was for a period of five years.

Upon the failure of the Gilbert enterprise and the loss of Sir Humphrey he is ardently enlisted in Raleigh’s project, furnishing in its interest, at Raleigh’s request, “discourses both in print and written hand.” These “discourses” are supposed to have been embodied in Raleigh’s memorial to the queen which brought him his patent of March, 1584, as liberal as Gilbert’s. The important document on Mr. Rawley’s Voyage, or A Particular Discourse on Western planting, may have embodied some of the features of the memorial. Hakluyt wrote the “Discourse” in London when ostensibly on a summer vacation from his duties at Paris. At the same time he was busied in judicious “trumpeting” of the enterprise among statesmen and merchant adventurers.

He continued hand in hand with Raleigh through the latter’s repeated attempts to plant his Virginia colonies, encouragingly buoyant and hopeful in each new venture following dismal and sometimes tragic failure; and he became foremost in the company of gentlemen and merchants to whom Raleigh was compelled to assign his patent in 1588. Afterward, upon the accession of James the first, he was the chief promoter of a petition to the king for a new grant of patents for Virginia colonization that brought the royal charter of April, 1606, under which were formed the corporations subsequently known as the London and the Plymouth companies, between whom was to be equally divided the great tract of country lying between the thirty-fourth and the forty-fifth degrees of latitude and reaching to the backwoods without bound. He was made one of the patentees of the London, or South Virginia, Company, which effected the first permanent English settlement—at Jamestown, in 1606.

His great work of The Principal Navigations was in preparation while Raleigh’s projects were under way. Its scheme was drawn at the outset with remarkable breadth and on a lofty scale. While in Stafford’s service at Paris he tells us, “I both heard in speech and read in books, other nations miraculously extolled for their discoveries and notable enterprises by sea, but the English of all others, for their sluggish security, and continual neglect of the like attempts ... either ignominiously reported or exceedingly condemned [? condensed].... Thus both hearing and reading the obliquy of our nation, and finding few or none of our own men able to reply herein; and further, not seeing any man to have care to recommend to the world the industrious labours and painful travels of our countrymen; for stopping the mouths of reproachers, myself ... determined, notwithstanding all difficulties, to undertake the burden of that work wherein all others pretended either ignorance or lack of leisure, or want of sufficient argument, whereas (to speak truly) the huge toil and the small profit to ensue, were the chief causes of the refusal.”

In the laborious collection of his material, much “dispersed, scattered, and hidden in several hucksters’ hands,” as he says, he sought the assistance of the foremost scholars, bibliographers, and writers, and cultivated the acquaintance of all classes of men who could give him information. He tells of talking with Don Antonio, the Portuguese Pretender, when in Paris, and with several of Antonio’s “best captains and pilots, one of whom was born in the East Indies.” He became friendly with travelled French sailors. One of them gave him a piece of supposed silver ore, and showed him “beasts’ skins draped and painted by Indians.” Another exhibited “a piece of the tree called Sassafras brought from Florida, and expounded its high medical virtues,” which afterward was much sought by voyagers to America. He browsed in the king’s library at Paris. He established friendly relations with foreign cosmographers and exchanged letters with them and with other foreign scholars. In London he found and copied rare manuscripts in Lord Lumley’s “stately library”; had access to the queen’s privy gallery at Westminster; and to a rich cabinet of curiosities brought home by travellers. He sought English sea-captains upon their return to port and had informing interviews with them about their adventures. Some brought him tales from Spain about the natives of Florida. Once he travelled two hundred miles on horseback to interview one Thomas Butts, then the only survivor of a disastrous English voyage to Newfoundland in 1536.

The initial volume was completed after his final return to England at the end of his term with the French embassy. Its publication was a distinct event in English letters. The lofty motives that impelled him to the production of the enlarged edition in three volumes he details in his picturesquely phrased “Epistle Dedicatorie” to Lord Charles Howard, prefixed to volume one.

“Right Honourable and my very good Lord,” he here writes, “after I had long since published in Print many Navigations and Discoveries of Strangers in divers languages, as well here at London as in the city of Paris during my five years abode in France with the worthy knight, Sir Edward Stafford, your brother-in-law, his Majesty’s most prudent and careful ambassador ligier with the French king; and had waded on still further and further in the sweet study of the history of Cosmography, I began at length to conceive that with diligent observation, something might be gathered which might commend our nation for their high courage and singular activity in the search and discovery of the most unknown quarters of the world.... The ardent love of my country devoured all difficulties, and, as it were, with a sharp goad provoked me and thrust me forward into this troublesome and painful action. And after great charges and infinite cares, after many watchings, toils, and travels, and wearying out of my weak body, at length I have collected three several volumes of the English Navigations, Traffics, and Discoveries to strange, remote, and far distant countries. Which work of mine I have not included with the compass of things duly done in these later days, as though little or nothing worthy of memory had been performed in former ages, but mounting aloft by the space of many hundred years, have brought to light many very rare and worthy monuments which long have lain miserably scattered in musty corners and wretchedly hidden in misty darkness, and were very like for the greatest part to have been buried in perpetual oblivion.”

In his Preface to the same volume, addressed to the “Friendly Reader,” he further emphasizes this point with the quaintly fashioned statement that in bringing these “antiquities smothered and buried in dark silence” to light, he has incorporated “into one body the torn and scattered limbs of our ancient and late navigations by sea, our voyages by land, and traffic of merchandise by both,” and restored “each particular member being before displaced, to their true joints and ligaments.” In other words, by the help of geography and chronology, which he terms “the Sun and the Moon, the right eye and the left of all history,” he has “referred each particular relation to the due time and space.” He narrates again in this Preface the toils that have been involved in bringing his work into this “homely and rough-hewn shape.” “What restless nights,” he exclaims, “what painful days, what heat, what cold I have endured; how many long and chargeable journeys I travelled: how many famous libraries I have searched into; what variety of ancient and modern writers I have perused; what a number of old records, patents, privileges, letters, etc., I have redeemed from obscurity and perishing; into how manifold acquaintance I have entered; what expenses I have not spared; and yet what fair opportunities of private gain, preferment, and ease I have neglected!” Yet, “howbeit, the honour and benefit of this commonweal wherein I live and breathe, hath made all difficulties seem easy, all pains and industry pleasant, and all expenses of light value and moment unto me.”

Here speaks the true scholar and the genuine patriot.

In 1585, while he was yet in France, ecclesiastical preferment came to Hakluyt, the reversion of the next prebendal stall that should become vacant being that year secured to him by Queen Elizabeth’s mandate; and the following year, upon the death of its incumbent, he took possession of the first stall in the cathedral of Bristol, although he did not give up his chaplaincy at the British embassy and finally return to England till 1588. In the spring of 1590 he was instituted to the rectory of Wetteringsett cum Blochford, in the county of Suffolk. In 1602 he became prebendary of Westminster. In 1612 he obtained the rectory of Gedney in Lincolnshire. He married about the year 1594, when occupying the Wetteringsett rectory.

These various clerical duties were apparently not exacting. At all events they did not interrupt the steady prosecution of his work of historical research and publication, nor abate a jot of his ardour for the advancement of American colonization. In his latter years he gathered around him a group of young men whom he inspired further to pursue or continue the work to which he had practically devoted his life. At his suggestion and through his friendly encouragement translations by various hands of standard works on Africa, China, and other little known parts, were then brought out. His own final publications were dated from Westminster.

He died presumably in his apartment at Westminster, on the twenty-third day of November, 1616, seven months after Shakspere. His burial place was in St. Peter’s Church, Westminster Abbey, but no inscription marks his grave.

He left a fair estate, comprising “the manor house of Bridge Place” and several houses in Westminster. This estate passed to his only son, Edmund Hakluyt, a Trinity College man, who, we are told, had not the prudence to keep it, but dispersed it through usurers’ and sheriffs’ hands.

Like Raleigh, Hakluyt never came to America, although more than once planning to make the voyage. With the permanent colonization of Virginia at last achieved, he was offered the living of Jamestown; but in place of himself he supplied it with a curate.

Equally with Raleigh he shares, and is awarded, the title of virtual founder of the English colonies in North America.

III
“THE PRINCIPAL NAVIGATIONS”

In Hakluyt’s monumental work of The Principal Navigations we have the whole brave story of English adventure through the centuries from the dim old days of the Saxon kings—when the known world was a little thing, only a spot on the map of to-day—to the Tudors’ times, with the discoveries of the New World, advancement into remote quarters of the Old World, the expansion of commerce, and the planting of colonies in America. It is truly, as aptly termed by James Anthony Froude, the prose epic of the modern English nation.

The first issue of 1589, the single volume in three parts, comprehended the main features of this story; the three-volumed second edition, 1598–1600, amplified it with a wealth of added incident and richness of color. The three parts of the portly volume of 1589, covering eight hundred and twenty-five foolscap pages, comprised successively the narratives of English voyages that had been performed to the South and Southeastern regions of the Old World; the North and Northeastern travels; and the Western, or New World, navigations. The contents were elaborately detailed in the full title-page.

FAC-SIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE THIRD, OR AMERICAN, VOLUME OF HAKLUYT’S "VOYAGES," EDITION OF 1598–1600.
From a copy of the original edition in the New York Public Library (Lenox Building).

The prefatory address “to the Favourable Reader” discloses the thoroughness of the compiler’s work. He has been careful in every possible case to present exact copies of the original narratives. Wherever he has copied from an historian, or “authour of authoritie,” either “stranger or naturall”—foreigner or native—he has “recorded the same word for word with his particular name and page of booke” where the “testimonie” is extant. “If the same were not reduced into our common language,” he has given it in the original followed by a translation. And “to the ende that those men which were the paynefull and personall travellers might reape that good opinion and iust [just] commendation which they haue deserued, and further, that euery man might answere for himselfe, iustifie [justify] his reports, and stand accountable for his own doings,” he has “referred euery voyage to his Author which both in person hath performed, and in writing hath left the same.” He adds that while he “meddles” in this work with the navigations only of the English nation he quotes in a few places “some strangers as witnesses of the things done”; yet these foreigners are only such as “either faythfully remember, or sufficiently confirme” the Englishmen’s travels.

A map of the world inserted in this volume was taken by Hakluyt from the atlas of Abraham Ortelius, a celebrated Flemish geographer, published at Antwerp in 1570. It was substituted temporarily for one in preparation for the book, but not completed by the engraver in time. Hakluyt alludes to this, in the address “to the Favourable Reader,” as “a very large and most exact terrestriall Globe collected and reformed according to the newest, secretest, and latest discoveries, both Spanish, Portugall, and English, composed by M[aster] Emmerie Mollineux of Lambeth, a rare gentleman in his profession, being therein for divers yeares, greatly supported by the purse and liberalitie of the worshipfull marchant M[aster] William Sanderson.” What is supposed to be the Mollineux map has been found in rare copies of this volume and of the second edition. A map bound in a treasured copy of the 1589 edition in the Boston Public Library contains this memorandum written on the back: "This map is a facsimile of the map of the world found in some of the first editions of this book. By Sabin and others it is attributed to Emmerie Mollineux of Lambeth, by Capt. Markham and others, to Edward Wright, the mathematician who perfected and rendered practicable what we know to-day as Mercator’s projection. Hallam describes this as ‘the best map of the 16th century and one of uncommon rarity.’ Only nine copies are known to exist."

Professor Walter Raleigh, in his essay on the English Voyages which accompanies the modern reprint of the Navigations (Glasgow, 1903), recalls the belief of Shaksperian authorities, among whom he is counted, that this is the map alluded to in Twelfth Night in the passage (Act III, Scene II), “He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies.”

The titles of the three-volumed second edition set forth the contents of each book with the same minute detail as that of the initial volume of 1589.

IV
THE EARLY VOYAGES

The English voyages begin with the adventures by the Britons northward in the sixth century for conquest. So Hakluyt places in the forefront of the Principal Navigations legendary accounts of the travels of British and Saxon kings. First are reproduced from ancient chronicles records of “the noble actes of Arthur and Malgo,” in the years 517 and 580, respectively, Arthur, after having “subdued all parts of Ireland,” sailing to “Island” (Iceland) and “the most northeast parts of Europe”; and Malgo into the North seas, recovering to his empire the “six islands of the Ocean sea, which before had been made tributaries by King Arthur, namely, Ireland, Island, Gotland, Orkney, Norway, and Denmark.”

Next follow fragmentary narratives of seventh-century voyages. Two “testimonies” are given of the exploits of the Saxon king, Edwin, with his conquest of the Isles of Man and Anglesey and the other northwestern islands of the Britons lying between Britain and Ireland, in the year 624. The second of these “testimonies” related how Edwin also subdued to the crown of England the Hebrides, “commonly called the Western Islands.” Then is reproduced the story of the voyage of Bertus, “general of an army sent into Ireland by Ecfridus [Ecgfrith] king of Northumberland” in the year 684. This warrior, the chronicler relates, “miserably wasted that innocent nation being always most friendly unto the people of England,” sparing neither churches nor monasteries, while the Islanders “repelled arms with arms and craving God’s aid from heaven with continual imprecations and curses they pleaded for revenge.”

The first recorded English voyage having discovery with expansion of trade for its object was that of one Octher to the northward, at the close of the ninth century, about the year 890. Octher was a prosperous whale-hunter, of Heligoland in the North Sea. The special purpose of his venture was to “increase the knowledge” of the northern coasts and countries “for the more commodity of fishing of horse-whales which have in their teeth bones of great price and excellence.” He found what he sought, and brought home some specimens of big whalebones, which he presented to the English king. The skins of the horse-whales he reported were “very good to make cables for ships, and so used” by the hardy dwellers on these coasts. A few years earlier Sighelmus, Bishop of Sheburne, as messenger of King “Alphred” (Ælfrid), bearing alms and gifts to the king of Rome, had penetrated into India, and returned to England with costly spices and divers strange and precious stones, many of which stones long after remained in the monuments of the church. Following Octher one Wolstan made a navigation into the sound of Denmark, of which brief account is given.

With these narrations of voyages for conquest and trade are interwoven tales of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, “for devotion’s sake,” and imagined relief from the penalties of sin, forerunners of the Crusades of succeeding centuries. Earliest of all chronicled is the legend of the “Travaile of Helena,” in the fourth century, before 337. She was Helena Flavia Augusta, afterward the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine “the Great,” emperor and king of Britain. She became a Christian when Constantine was converted. By reason of her “singular beauty, faith, religion, goodness, and godly majesty,” she was “famous in all the world.” She was “skilful in divinity,” and wrote and composed “divers books and certain Greek verses.” She made the perilous journey to Jerusalem toward the close of a long life, being “warned by some visions,” and piously visited “all the places that Christ had frequented.” She is said to have discovered “the holy sepulchre and the true cross.” Then follows a note on Constantine’s travels to Greece, Egypt, and Persia, in about 339. He “overthrew the false gods of the heathen, and by many laws, often revived, he abrogated the worshipping of images in all the countries of Greece, Egypt, Persia, Asia, and the whole Roman empire, commanding Christ only to be worshipped.”

In the tenth century English ships began to be found in far distant seas. Fragments are recorded concerning the beginnings and growth of the “classical and warlike” shipping of England in that period. We have the spectacle of the grand navy of the Saxon Eadgar, “the Peaceful,” who succeeded to the whole realm in 959, comprising “four thousand sail at the least.” With this fleet it was his annual pastime to make “summer progresses” round almost the whole of his then large monarchy, thus demonstrating “to the world” that “as he wisely knew the ancient bounds and limits of the British empire” so he “could and would royally, justly, and triumphantly enjoy the same spite the devil and maugre the force of any foreign potentate.” By the twelfth century London, as described in extracts from a foreign writer, had become a “noble Citie,” frequented with the “traffique of Marchants resorting thither out of all nations,” and having “outlandish wares ... conveighed” into it from the “famous river of the Thames.” At the same time, and by the same writer, the “famous Towne of Bristow” (Bristol) is represented “with an Haven belonging thereunto which is a commodious and safe receptacle for all ships directing their course for the same from Ireland, Norway, and other outlandish and foren [foreign] countreys.”

To this century, in 1170, is credited the “most ancient” discovery of the West Indies by Madoc, the Welshman, and his subsequent attempt at colonization on one of the islands. Hakluyt takes the tale “out of the history of Wales lately published by M[aster] David Powel, Doctor of Divinity.” Madoc was a son of Owen Guyneth, prince of North Wales. Upon Guyneth’s death his sons “fell at debate who should inherit after him.” The eldest, Edward, or Jorweth Drwydion, was counted “unmeet to govern because of the maim on his face,” and Howell took up the rule. But Howell was born out of matrimony. So the second legitimate son, David, rose against him, and “fighting with him slew him.” Thereafter David enjoyed quietly the whole land of North Wales till Edward’s son came of age. Meanwhile Madoc had left the land in contention betwixt his brothers, and had sought adventures by sea. At this point the story of discovery begins. Having prepared “certain ships with men and munitions” he sailed westward; and leaving the coast of Ireland far north he at length came “unto a land unknown, where he saw many strange things.” This land, the Welsh historian declared, “must needs be some part of that country of which the Spaniards affirm themselves to be the first finders since Hanno’s time; whereupon it is manifest that that country was by Britaines [Britons] discovered long before Columbus led any Spaniards thither.” The historian admitted that “there be many fables” regarding Madoc’s discovery, but, notwithstanding, the fact remained; “sure it is there he was.” Next follows the entertaining legend of Madoc’s attempted settlement:

“And after he had returned home and declared the pleasant and fruitfull countreys that he had seene without inhabitants, and, upon the contrary part, for what barren & wild ground his brethren and nephewes did murther one another, he prepared a number of ships, and got him such men and women as were desirous to live in quietnesse: and taking leave of his friends, tooke his journey thitherward againe. Therefore it is to be supposed that he and his people inhabited part of those countreys: for it appeareth by Francis Lopez de Gomara, that in Acuzamil and other places the people honoured the crosse. Whereby it may be gathered that Christians had bene there before the comming of the Spanyards. But because this people were not many they followed the maners of the land which they came unto, & used the language they found there. This Madoc arriving in the Westerne country, unto the which he came in the yere 1170, left most of his people there, and returning backe for more of his owne nation, acquaintance & friends to inhabit that faire & large countrey, went thither againe with ten saile, as I find noted by Gutyn Owen.” Hakluyt rounds off this engaging chapter with this swelling verse “of Meredith sonne of Rhesus,” singing Madoc’s praises:

“Madoc I am the sonne of Owen Guynedd

With stature large, and comely grace adorned:

No lands at home nor store of wealth me please,

My minde was whole to search the Ocean seas.”

With the opening of the twelfth century the fiery Crusades from the Christian nations for the rescue of Jerusalem from the infidel were well under way. Preliminary to the pitiful and bloody record, this account of a peaceful voyage, in the year 1064, in which Englishmen had part, with an artless touch of autobiography by the narrator, Ingulphus, afterward abbot of Croiland, is reproduced:

"I, Ingulphus, an humble servant of reverend Guthlac and of his monastery of Croiland, borne in England, and of English parents, at the beautifull citie of London, was in my youth, for the attaining of good letters, placed first at Westminster, and afterward sent to the Universitie of Oxford. And having excelled divers of mine equals in learning of Aristotle, I inured my selfe somewhat unto the first & second Rhethorique of Tullie. And as I grew in age, disdayning my parents meane estate, and forsaking mine owne native soyle, I affected the Courts of kings and princes, and was desirous to be clad in silke, and to weare brave and costly attire. And loe, at the same time William our sovereigne king now, but then Erle of Normandie, with a great troup of followers and attendants, came unto London, to conferre with king Edward, the Confessour, his kinsman. Into whose company intruding my selfe, and proffering my service for the performance of any speedy or weightie affayres, in short time, after I had done many things with good successe, I was knowen and most entirely beloved by the victorious Erie himselfe, and with him I sayled into Normandie. And there being made his secretarie, I governed the Erles Court (albeit with the envie of some) as my selfe pleased, yea, whom I would I abased and preferred whom I thought good.

"When as therefor, being carried with a youthfull heat and lustie humour, I began to be wearie even of this place, wherein I was advanced so high above my parentage, and with an inconstant minde, and an affection too too ambitious, most vehemently aspired at all occasions to climbe higher: there went a report throughout all Normandie, that divers Archbishops of the Empire, and secular princes were desirous for their soules health, and for devotion sake, to goe on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Wherefore out of the family of our lorde the Earle, sundry of us, both gentlemen and clerkes (principall of whom was my selfe) with the licence and good will of our sayd lord the earle, sped us on that voiage, and travailing thirtie horses of us into high Germanie, we joyned our selves unto the Archbishop of Mentz. And being with the companies of the Bishops seven thousand persons sufficiently provided for such an expedition, we passed prosperously through many provinces, and at length attained unto Constantinople. Where doing reverence unto the Emperour Alexius, we sawe the Church of Sancta Sophia, and kissed divers sacred reliques.

"Departing thence through Lycia, we fell into the hands of the Arabian theeves: and after we had bene robbed of infinite summes of money, and had lost many of our people, hardly escaping with extreame danger of our lives, at length wee joyfully entered into the most wished citie of Jerusalem. Where we were received by the most reverend, aged, and holy patriarke Sophronius, with great melodie of cymbals and with torch-light, and were accompanied unto the most divine Church of our Saviour his sepulchre with a solemne procession aswell of Syrians as of Latines. Here, how many prayers we uttered, what abundance of teares we shed, what deepe sighs we breathed foorth, our Lord Jesus Christ onely knoweth. Wherefore being conducted from the most glorious sepulchre of Christ to visite other sacred monuments of the citie, we saw with weeping eyes a great number of holy Churches and oratories, which Achim the Souldan [sultan] of Egypt had lately destroyed. And so having bewailed with sadde teares, and most sorowful and bleeding affections, all the mines of that most holy city both within and without, and having bestowed money for the reedifying of some, we desired with most ardent devotion to go forth into the countrey, to wash our selves in the most sacred river of Jordan, and to kisse all the steppes of Christ. Howbeit the theevish Arabians lurking upon every way, would not suffer us to travell farre from the city by reason of their huge and furious multitudes.

“Wherefor about the spring there arrived at the port of Joppa a fleet of ships from Genoa. In which fleet (when the Christian merchants had exchanged all their wares at the coast townes, and had likewise visited the holy places) wee all of us embarked, committing our selfes to the seas: and being tossed with many stormes and tempests, at length wee arrived at Brundusium: and so with a prosperous journey travelling thorow Apulia towards Rome, we there visited the habitations of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and did reverence unto divers monuments of holy martyrs in all places thorowout the citie. From thence the archbishops and other princes of the empire travelling towards the right hand for Alemain, and we declining towards the left hand for France, departed asunder, taking our leaves with unspeakable thankes and courtesies. And so at length, of thirty horsemen which went out of Normandie, fat, lustie, and frolique, we returned thither skarse twenty poore pilgrims of us, being all footmen, and consumed with leannesse to the bare bones.”

The story of the voyages of Englishmen in the twelfth-century Crusades, recorded in chronological order, opens with the chivalrous adventure of Edgar, grandson of Edmund, surnamed “Ironsides,” accompanied by “valiant Robert the son of Godwin,” in the year 1102, when, immediately upon their arrival out, signal aid was rendered by them to Baldwin, the second Latin king of Jerusalem, whom they found hard pressed by the Turks at Rama. The “valiant Robert” sprang to the forefront, and going before the king with his drawn sword, he cut a lane through the enemy’s camp, “slaying the Turks on his right hand and his left.” So Baldwin escaped. But the knight fared ill. “Upon this happy success, being more eager and fierce, as he went forward too hastily, his sword fell out of his hand. Which as he stooped to take up, being oppressed by the whole multitude, he was there taken and bound.” His fate was tragic. “From thence (as some say) being carried into Babylon, or Alcair, in Egypt, when he would not renounce Christ, he was tied unto a stake in the midst of the market-place, and being shot through with arrows, died a martyr.” Edgar having lost his beloved knight, retired from crusading, and returned to England honoured with “many rewards both by the Greekish and the German Emperor.”

Five years later, in 1107, a “very great warlike fleet of the Catholic nation of England to the number of about seven thousand,” together with “more men of war of the kingdom of Denmark, of Flanders, and of Antwerp,” set sail in ships then called “busses”—small vessels carrying two masts, and with two cabins, one at each end—for the Holy Land. This body of warring zealots reached Joppa after a prosperous voyage, and thence, under a strong guard provided them by King Baldwin, passed to Jerusalem safely from all assaults and ambushes of the Gentiles. When they had solemnly offered up their vows in the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre, they returned with great joy to Joppa, and were ready to fight for Baldwin in any venture he might propose against the enemy. Plans were formed to besiege a stronghold. But the move ended with an effective demonstration of the fleet in brave array, displaying “pendants and streams of purple and diverse other glorious colours, and flags of scarlet colour and silk.”

Near the end of this century, in 1190, came the “worthy voyage of Richard the first, king of England, into Asia for the recovery of Jerusalem out of the hands of the Saracens,” with which began the Third Crusade of the nine of history. This was that Richard, of restless zeal, surnamed “Ceur de Lion,” Henry the second’s son. After Henry’s death Richard, “remembering the rebellions that he had undutifully raised” against his father, “sought for absolution of his trespass.” And “in part of satisfaction for the same,” he agreed to make this crusade with Philip, the French king. Accordingly so soon as he was crowned he began his preparations. The first business was to raise a comfortable sum of money for the expedition. It was promptly accomplished by exacting “a tenth of the whole Realm, the Christians to make threescore and ten thousand pounds, and the Jews which then dwelt in the Realm threescore thousand.” At length his fleet was afloat, and he was off to join Philip of France. This Crusade occupied the first four years of Richard’s reign, and during it he made the conquest of Cyprus, won a great victory at Jaffa, marched on Jerusalem, concluded a truce with the sultan, Saladin, and slaughtered three thousand hostages when Saladin failed to come to time with an agreed-upon payment of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. The butchery of the hostages was performed on the summit of a hill that the tragedy might be in full view of Saladin’s camp. On his homeward journey he was shipwrecked, and he was long imprisoned in Germany. Hakluyt’s version of this Crusade is a detailed account “drawn out of the Book of Actes and Monuments of the Church of England written by M. John Foxe,” more popularly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Richard’s code of laws and ordinances for the government of his crusading fleet, well illustrates at once the rigour of the discipline and the character of the British sailor of that day. It also discloses the antiquity of the method of punishment by tar-and-feathering:

"1. That who so killed any person on shipboord should be tied with him that was slaine and throwen into the sea.

"2. And if he killed him on the land, he should in like maner be tied with the partie slaine, and be buried with him in the earth.

"3. He that shalbe convicted by lawfull witnes to draw out his knife or weapon to the intent to strike any man, or that hath striken any to the drawing of blood shall loose his hand.

"4. Also he that striketh any person with his hand without effusion of blood, shall be plunged three times in the sea.

"5. Item, who so speaketh any opprobrious or contumelious wordes in reviling or cursing one another, for so oftentimes as he hath reviled shall pay so many ounces of silver.

“6. Item, a thiefe or felon that hath stollen being lawfully convicted, shal have his head shorne and boyling pitch powred upon his head, and feathers or downe strawed upon the same, whereby he may be knowen, and so at the first landing place they shall come to, there to be cast up.”

In the Crusades of the thirteenth century we have notes on the expeditions of the “Knights of Jerusalem” against the Saracens: in brief recitals of the voyages of Ranulph, earl of Chester, sent out by Henry the third in 1218, with “Saer de Quincy, earl of Winchester, William de Albanie, earl of Arundel, besides divers barons,” and “a goodly company of soldiers and men at arms”; and of Richard, earl of Cornwall, Henry the third’s brother (and afterward king of the Romans), accompanied by William Longespee, earl of “Sarisburie” (Salisbury) and other nobles “for their valiancy greatly renowned,” and “a great number of Christian soldiers,” in 1240, beginning the Seventh Crusade. In 1248 Longespee—or Longsword, as his fellow-knights called him for his prowess—made a second voyage and lost his life in a battle with the Saracens. Finally, in 1270, Henry the third’s son, Prince Edward, and other young nobles, having “taken upon them the cross,” at the hand of the Pope’s legate then in England, “to the relief of the Holy Land and the subversion of the enemies of Christ,” sailed out with a gallant war fleet. They landed at Acre, and thence the prince, with an army of six or seven thousand soldiers, marched upon Nazareth. This he took, and “those that he found there he slew.” Other victories followed with much slaughter of Saracens. At length the triumphant prince fell ill at Acre, and during his sickness a plot was concocted by the emir of Joppa to remove him by assassination. This failed, the prince thwarting the scheme by himself killing the emir’s messenger just as the treacherous dagger was to be thrust into his bosom. Shortly after he concluded a peace for ten years and returned to England, to be crowned king upon his father’s death.

Edward’s was the last exploit of Englishmen in the Crusades, and it closed the last one. Attempts were made at subsequent periods to revive the flame, but these resulted only in flares of short duration. A shining one for a moment was kindled by King Henry the fourth in 1413. It flashed out with his sudden death at Westminster while the ships and galleys for the proposed voyage were building.

“THE GREAT HARRY,” AN ENGLISH SHIP OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

At this time the competition for trade advantages in the east and northeast were becoming of larger import to England. A half-century earlier, in 1360, in Edward the third’s reign, a Franciscan friar, mathematician, and astronomer, Nicholas de Linna, of Oxford, had made a voyage into the north parts, “all the regions situated under the North-pole,” had taken valuable observations, and had reported his discoveries to Edward with a description of the northern islands. In 1390 Henry, earl of Derby, afterward King Henry the fourth, made a voyage into Prussia; and the next year the duke of Gloucester, Edward the third’s youngest son, also penetrated Prussia. As early as 1344 the island of Madeira had been discovered by an Englishman, and sometime occupied. The latter, however, was not a commercial discovery, but a romantic one, and England at the time, and for long after, was not aware of it. Hakluyt takes the story from a Portuguese history. It was regarded by most later historians as apocryphal, but its genuineness has been finally demonstrated through the historical researches of the English geographer, R. H. Major. It runs in this wise. The discoverer was one Robert Macham, when fleeing from England to France with his stolen bride, Anna d’Arfet. His ship was tempest-tossed out of its course and cast toward this island. He anchored in a haven (which years afterward was named Macham in memory of him) and landed on the island with his lady and the ship’s company. Soon with a fair wind the ship and part of the company “made sail away.” After a while the young woman died “from thought,” perhaps homesickness; and Macham built a tomb for her upon which he inscribed their names, and “the occasion of their arrival there.” Then he ordered a boat made of a single great tree, and when it was done, he put to sea with his few companions that were left. At length they came upon the coast of Afrike (Africa) without sail or oar. “And the Moors which saw it took it to be a marvellous thing and presented him unto the king of that country for a wonder, and that king also sent him and his companions for a miracle unto the king of Spain.”

With the opening of the fifteenth century, Portugal was pressing forward for a share with the maritime states of Italy, Genoa, and Venice in the rich eastern traffic. In 1410 Prince Henry, “the Navigator,” had begun his systematic explorations. A younger son of the Portuguese king John the first, and a grandson of Edward the third of England, born at the close of the fourteenth century (in 1394), after gaining renown as a soldier, he turned to loftier aims and became one of the first astronomers, mathematicians, cartographers, and directors of maritime discoveries in his time. He was the first to conceive the idea of cutting a way out through the unexplored ocean. His superb genius gave the inspiration to marvellous results in the discovery of more than half the globe within the cycle of a century. At the age of twenty-four the hope was born in him of reaching India by the south point of Africa, and thereafter to this end his speculations and studies were ardently directed. The earliest expeditions sent out by him failed of results, and his theories were ridiculed by his fellow-nobles. At length, however, in 1419 and 1420, the Madeira Islands, Porto Santo and Madeira, were rediscovered by his navigators. A little more than a decade later, in 1433, they had rounded Cape Bojador. In 1435 the prince’s cup-bearer had passed beyond that cape. In 1443 another of his navigators had sailed beyond Cape Blanco. The next year Pope Martin the fifth, by a Papal Bull, declared Portugal in possession of all the lands her mariners had visited as far as the Indies. In 1445 the mouth of the Senegal and afterward Cape Verde were reached. Prince Henry died in 1460, but the work he had begun continued, after a temporary check, to be carried forward. In 1469 Portuguese trade was opened with the Gold Coast. In 1484 the mouth of the Congo was discovered. In 1486 Bartholomew Dias doubled the Cape of Good Hope.

Meanwhile these wondrous advances of Portugal were stimulating other maritime nations to the quest for new passages to India.

V
QUEST FOR THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE

Portugal now had practically a monopoly of the traffic with the Orient, and the finding of new paths to India by her maritime rivals was essential in the struggle for commercial supremacy. A passage by way of “Cathay” had the most powerful attractions.

“Great Cathay,” the marvellous empire of the remote East, whence travellers had brought wonderful tales in the latter Middle Ages, had become the ultimate goal of adventurous voyages. The hazy region was the “extremity of the habitable world” of the ancients. Early Christian fancy had identified within it the Earthly Paradise, the seat of the old “Garden of Eden,” beyond the Ocean stream, “raised so high on a triple terrace of mountain that the deluge did not touch it.” Under the name of Cathay the strange empire had been opened to the speculation of mediæval Europe in the thirteenth century, with the vast conquest of the Mongol Genghis Khan, reckoned in history one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen.

Two Franciscan friars—John de Plano Carpini and William of Rubruk (Rubruquis) in French Flanders, who reached the court in Mongolia, the former in 1245 or 1246, the latter in 1247 or 1253—appear to have been the first Europeans to approach its borders. They saw the Cathayans in the bazaars of their Great Khan’s camps, and brought back to Europe the first accounts of the people and of the wonderful things seen, presented in their journals of their adventures. Both of these “rare jewels,” as he appreciatively terms them, Hakluyt found at London in manuscripts while delving in Lord Lumley’s library, and he printed them in full in the second edition of the Principal Navigations. After the friars two Venetians penetrated the empire, the first European travellers to visit Cathay itself. These were the brothers Nicolo and Maffei Polo, members of a noble trading family of Venice. They were there for a short time in or about the year 1269. Soon afterward they made a second visit, when Marco, the son of Nicolo, then a youth of seventeen, quick-witted, open-eyed, and observant, accompanied them. This visit extended through more than twenty years, the three Venetians basking in the sunshine of the Great Khan’s favour. The elders helped the Khan with suggestions for the profitable application of the knowledge of the West which they opened to him, while Marco’s cleverness was variously employed in his service; sometimes as a commissioner attached to the Imperial council, at others on distant missions, and at one period a governor of a great city. Marco’s recollections, given to the world long after the final return of the Polos to Venice, first made the name of Cathay familiar to Europe. These recollections were taken down from his lips by one Rusticiano of Pisa, a clever literary hack, who was shut up in prison with him for a year (the two having been among the captives taken by the Genoese in a sea-fight with the Venetians in 1298), and formed the basis of the book of marvellous adventures, subsequently published in various languages and varying texts, which came to be famous as the Voyages and Travels of Marco Polo. From this Hakluyt also gives copious extracts.

Commercial intercourse of adventuresome European traders began with the region in the early fourteenth century, and continued fairly to flourish for about fifty years. Then, with changes in dynasties and tribal wars, the ways of approach were closed and it fell again into darkness. It was long supposed to be a separate country, distinct from the Indies, lying to the north of what we now know as China, and stretching to the Arctic sea. It was not until 1603 (after the publication of the final volume of the Principal Navigations) that it was found to be identical with the then vaguely known empire of China, of which similar marvels had for some time been recited. Its identity was the discovery by a lay Jesuit, Benedict Goës, sent out through Central Asia by his superiors in India for the specific object of determining whether Cathay and China were or were not separate empires. Goës died upon the completion of his mission, at Suhchow, the frontier city of China.

Cathay was the aim of Columbus. He was possessed by the conviction that the fabled riches of this wondrous region lay directly across the trackless Atlantic “over against” the coast of Spain. Believing the world to be a sphere, he conceived his design of reaching Asia by sailing west. This was the project that he carried for weary years from court to court, seeking the patronage of a favouring prince.

But for a mischance England, instead of Spain, would have had the glory and the advantage of his first discovery of 1492. Hakluyt recalls the circumstances in these two “testimonies”:

(1)

"The offer of the discovery of the West Indies by Christopher Columbus to king Henry the seventh in the yeere 1488 the 13 of February: with the kings acceptation of the offer, & the cause whereupon he was deprived of the same: recorded in the thirteenth chapter of the history of Don Fernand Columbus of the life and deeds of his father Christopher Columbus.

"Christopher Columbus fearing least if the king of Castile in like maner (as the king of Portugall had done) should not condescend unto his enterprise, he should be enforced to offer the same againe to some other prince, & so much time should be spent therein, sent into England a certaine brother of his which he had with him, whose name was Bartholomew Columbus, who albeit he had not the Latine tongue, yet neverthelesse was a man of experience and skilfull in Sea causes, and could very wel make sea cards & globes and other instruments belonging to that profession, as he was instructed by his brother. Wherefore after that Bartholomew Columbus was departed for England his lucke was to fall into the hands of pirats, which spoiled him with the rest of them which were in the ship which he went in. Upon which occasion, and by reason of his poverty and sicknesse which cruelly assaulted him in a countrey so farre distant from his friends, he deferred his ambassage for a long while, untill such time as he had gotten somewhat handsome about him with making of Sea cards. At length he began to deale with king Henry the seventh the father of Henry the eight which reigneth at this present: unto whom he presented a mappe of the world, wherein these verses were written, which I found among his papers: and I will here set them downe rather for their antiquity than for their goodnesse:

"‘Thou which desirest easily the coasts of lands to know,

This comely mappe right learnedly the same to thee will shew:

Which Strabo, Plinie, Ptolomew and Isodore maintaine:

Yet for all that they do not all in one accord remaine.

Here also to set downe the late discovered burning Zone

By Portingals unto the world which whilon was unknowen,

Whereof the knowledge now at length thorow all the world is blowen.’

"And a little under he added:

"‘For the Authour or the Drawer.

"‘He, whose deare native soile bright stately Genua,

Even he whose name is Bartholomew Colon de Terra Rubra

The year of Grace a thousand and four hundred and four-score

And eight, and on the thirteenth day of February more,

In London published this worke. To Christ all laud therefore.’

“And because some peradventure may observe that he calleth himselfe Columbus de Terra Rubra, I say, that in like maner I have seene some subscriptions of my father Christopher Columbus, before he had the degree of Admirall, wherein he signed his name thus, Columbus de Terra Rubra. But to returne to the king of England, I say, that after he had seen the map, and that which my father Christopher Columbus offered unto him, he accepted the offer with joyfull countenance, and sent to call him into England. But because God had reserved the sayd offer for Castile, Columbus was gone in the meane space, and also returned with the performance of his enterprise, as hereafter in order shall be rehearsed. Now will I leave off from making any farther mention of that which Bartholomew Colon had negotiated in England, and I will return unto the Admirall, &c.”

(2)

"Another testimony taken out of the 60 chapter of the aforesayd history of Ferdinando Columbus, concerning the offer that Bartholemew Columbus made to King Henry the seventh on the behalfe of his brother Christopher.

“Christopher Columbus the Admirall being returned from the discovery of Cuba and Jamayca, found in Hispaniola his brother Bartholomew Columbus, who before had beene sent to intreat of an agreement with the king of England for the discovery of the Indies, as we have sayd before. This Bartholomew therefore returning unto Castile, with the capitulations granted by the king of England to his brother, understood at Paris by Charles the king of France, that the Admirall his brother had already performed that discovery: whereupon the French king gave unto the sayd Bartholemew an hundred French crownes to beare his charges into Spaine. And albeit he made great haste upon this good newes to meet with the Admirall in Spaine, yet at his comming to Sevil his brother was already returned to the Indies with seventeene saile of shipps. Wherefore to fulfill that which he had left him in charge in the beginning of the yeere 1494 he repaired to the Catholike princes, taking with him Diego Colon my brother, and me also, which were to be preferred as Pages to the most excellent Prince Don John, who now is with God, according to the commandment of the Catholike Queene Lady Isabell, which was then in Validolid. As soone[As soone] therefore as we came to the Court, the princes called for Don Bartholomew, and sent him to Hispaniola with three ships, &c.”

The news of Columbus’ achievement filled all Europe with wonder and admiration. To “sail by the West into the East where spices grow by a way that was never known before” was affirmed “a thing more divine than human.” Offering the promise of a direct route to Cathay, the feat was of tremendous import. There was especially “great-talk of it” in the English court with keen regret that England, through untoward happenings, had failed of the honour and profit of the momentous discovery, and Henry and his counsellors were eager to emulate Spain. Although the full significance of the discovery was not then realized—that the new-found islands were the barriers of a new continent—no underestimate of the value of the region was made by either nation. Ferdinand and Isabella gave it the name of the Indies, considering it, with the discoverer, to be a part of India, and no time was lost in clinching their rights. Nor were “their Catholic highnesses” idle. In May, 1493, Pope Alexander the sixth granted his bull fixing a “line of demarcation” between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions, which was nothing less than a division of the world between Spain and Portugal. This line was run from pole to pole and one hundred degrees west of the Azores, and all newly discovered and to be discovered lands on the east of the line were assigned to the absolute possession of the crown of Portugal, those on the west to the crown of Castile. In 1494 Columbus made his second voyage and discovered, among other islands, Porto Rico and Jamaica.

Meanwhile in the English maritime city of Bristol the Venetian merchant, John Cabot (or Zuan Caboto in the Venetian dialect), then resident there, had perfected his scheme of shortening the way to India by the Northwest Passage, and in 1496, before Columbus’s return from his second voyage, it had been proposed to King Henry, had met his hearty approbation, had been endorsed by his letters patent issued to Cabot and Cabot’s three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Santius, and preparations for the venture had begun.

VI
THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS

Henry’s patent, bearing date March 5, 1495/6, and distinguished as “the most ancient American state paper of England,” gave to the grantees sweeping powers and a pretty complete commercial monopoly. They were authorized to sail in all seas to the East, the West, and the North; to seek out in any part of the undiscovered world islands, countries, and provinces of the heathen hitherto unknown to Christians; affix the ensigns of England to all places newly found and take possession of them for the English crown. They were to have the exclusive right of frequenting the places of their discovery, and enjoy all the fruits and gains of their navigations except a fifth part, which was to go to the king. The sole restriction imposed was that on their return voyages they should always land at the port of Bristol. With these generous concessions, however, the canny king stipulated that the enterprise should be wholly at the Cabots’ “own proper costs and charges.”

Hakluyt reproduces the text of this precious document in the first volume of the Principal Navigations. It runs as follows:

"Henry by the grace of God, King of England and France, and lord of Ireland, to all to whom these presents shall come, Greeting.

"Be it knowen that we have given and granted, and by these presents do give and grant for us and our heires, to our welbeloved John Cabot citizen of Venice, to Lewis, Sebastian, and Santius, sonnes of the sayd John, and to the heires of them, and every of them, and their deputies, full and free authority, leave and power to saile to all parts, countreys, and seas of the East, of the West, and of the North, under our banners and ensignes, with five ships of what burthen or quantity soever they be, and as many mariners or men as they will have with them in the sayd ships, upon their owne proper costs and charges, to seeke out, discover, and finde whatsoever isles, countreys, regions or provinces of the heathen and infidels whatsoever they be, and in what part of the world soever they be, which before this time have bene unknowen to all Christians: we have granted to them, and also to every of them, the heires of them, and every of them, and their deputies, and have given this license to set up our banners and ensignes in every village, towne, castle, isle, or mainland of them newly found. And that the aforesayd John and his sonnes, or their heires and assignes may subdue, occupy, and possesse all such townes, cities, castles and isles of them found, which they can subdue, occupy, and possesse, as our vassals, and lieutenants, getting unto us the rule, title, and jurisdiction of the same villages, townes, castles, & firme land so found.

"Yet so that the aforesayd John, and his sonnes and heires, and their deputies, be holden and bounden of all the fruits, profits, gaines, and commodities growing of such navigation, for every their voyages as often as they shall arrive at our port of Bristoll (at the which port they shall be bound and holden onely to arrive) all maner of necessary costs and charges by them made, being deducted, to pay unto us in wares or money the fift part of the capitall gaine so gotten. We giving and granting unto them and to their heires and deputies, that they shall be free from all paying of customes of all and singular such merchandize as they shall bring with them from those places so newly found. And moreover, we have given and granted to them, their heires and deputies, that all the firme lands, isles, villages, townes, castles and places whatsoever they be that they shall chance to finde, may[may] not of any other of our subjects be frequented or visited without the license of the foresayd John and his sonnes, and their deputies, under paine of forfeiture aswell of their shippes as of all and singuler goods of all them that shall presume to saile to those places so found. Willing, and most straightly commanding all and singuler our subjects aswell on land as on sea, to give good assistance to the aforesayd John and his sonnes and deputies, and that as well in arming and furnishing their ships or vessels, as in provision of food, and in buying of victuals for their money, and all other things by them to be provided necessary for the sayd navigation, they do give them all their helpe and favour.

“In witnesse whereof we have caused to be made these our Letters patents. Witnesse our selfe at Westminster the fift day of March, in the eleventh yeare of our reigne.”

Under this patent, the following year—1497—John Cabot sailed out of Bristol with one small vessel, and supplemented the discovery of Columbus in finding the mainland of America.

John Cabot, like Columbus, was a Genoese, but neither the exact place nor the date of his birth is known. He was in Venice as early as 1461, as appears from a record in the Venetian archives of his naturalization as a citizen of Venice under date of March 28, 1476, after the prescribed residence of fifteen years. There he was apparently a merchant. It is said that he also made voyages at times as a shipmaster. He became proficient in the study of cosmography and in the science of navigation. With Columbus he accepted the theory of the rotundity of the earth, and is said to have been early desirous of himself putting it to a practical test. At one time he visited Arabia, where at Mecca he saw the caravans coming in laden with spices from distant countries. Asking where the spices grew, he was told by the carriers that they did not know; that other caravans came to their homes with this rich merchandise from more distant parts, and that these others told them that it was brought from still more remote regions. So he came to reason in this wise: that “if the Orientals affirmed to the Southerners that those things come from a distance from them, and so from hand to hand, presupposing the rotundity of the earth, it must be that the last ones get them at the North toward the West.” On this argument he later based his Northwest Passage scheme. He moved to England probably not long before the development of this scheme (some early writers, however, place the date about the year 1477), and took up his residence in Bristol, to “follow the trade of merchandise.” His wife, a Venetian, and his three sons, all supposed to have been born in Venice, accompanied him. Sebastian, the second son, who became the most illustrious of the family, was then a youth, but sufficiently old to have already some “knowledge of the humanities and the sphere,” as he long afterward stated. The brothers, it is supposed, were all of age when the king’s patent was issued, and Sebastian about twenty-three.

John Cabot’s expedition sailed early in May and was absent three months. It was essentially a voyage of discovery. His vessel was a Bristol ship, and called the “Matthew.” The ship’s company comprised eighteen persons, “almost all Englishmen and from Bristol.” The foreigners were a Burgundian and a Genoese. Sebastian, it is believed, accompanied his father, but neither of the other sons. The chief men of the enterprise were “great sailors.”

The brave little ship plowed the mysterious sea for seven hundred leagues, as estimated, when on the twenty-fourth of June, in the morning, land was sighted. This was supposed by the early historians, and so set down in their histories, to have been the island of Newfoundland. But through nineteenth century findings of data it has been made clear that it was the north part, or the eastern point of the present island of Cape Breton, off the coast of Nova Scotia. This is demonstrated by the inscription “prima tierra vista” at the head of the delineation of that island, on a map attributed to Sebastian Cabot composed in 1544, nearly half a century after the voyage, and subsequently missing till the discovery of a copy three centuries later, in 1843, in Germany, at the house of a Bavarian curate, whence it passed to the National Library at Paris. On this map Cape Breton island forms a part of the mainland of Nova Scotia, the Gut of Canso not then having been discovered. On the same day that the landfall was made a “large island adjacent” to it was discovered, and named St. John because of its finding on the day of the festival of St. John the Baptist. It is marked the “I del Juan” on this map, and is the present Prince Edward Island.

A landing was made at the landfall and Cabot planted a large cross with “one flag of England, and one of St. Mark by reason of his being a Venetian,” and took possession for the English king. No human beings were seen, but “certain snares set to catch game, and a needle for making nets,” showing that the place was inhabited, were found and taken to be displayed to the king upon the return home. In one contemporary account, a letter of another Venetian merchant in England, Lorenzo Pasqualigo, written from London to his brothers in Venice, Cabot is said to have coasted, after striking land, for three hundred leagues, and to have seen “two islands at starboard.” Accepting this statement as authentic, with other data subsequently found, his course from his “Prima Vista” has been traced by later historical authorities in this wise: northwesterly, to obtain a good view of his Isle of St. John; northerly, through the present Northumberland Strait, sighting the coast of New Brunswick near Miramichi Bay; along the Gulf of St. Lawrence; northeasterly, passing to the north of Newfoundland through the Strait of Belle Isle, between Newfoundland and Labrador; and thence homeward. It is well indicated on the accompanying sketch-map originally published in connection with a paper contributed to the Maine Historical Society by Frederick Kidder, a competent authority, in 1874.

Cabot believed that the lands he had discovered lay in “the territory of the Grand Cham,” as Columbus thought his were of eastern Asia.

The expedition arrived back at Bristol early in August and the story it brought created a sensation. With his report to the king Cabot exhibited a map of the region visited and a solid globe, and presented the game-snares and net-needle which he had found. He told the king that he believed it practicable by starting from the parts which he had discovered, and constantly hugging the shore toward the equinoctial, to reach an island called by him Cipango, where he thought all the spices of the world and also the precious stones originated; and this region found and colonized, there might be established in London a greater storehouse of spices than the chief one then existing, in Alexandria. All this much moved the king, and he promised to promote a second expedition for this purpose in the following spring.

Kidder’s sketch-map of John Cabot’s voyage in 1497.

Meanwhile John Cabot became the hero of the hour, and great honours were paid him. The king gave him money and granted him an annual pension of twenty pounds (equal to two hundred modern pounds in purchasing value), which was to be charged upon the revenues of the port of Bristol; he dressed in silk; and he was styled the “Great Admiral.” He also appears to have been knighted. He distributed largess with a free hand, if the tales of the letter-writers of the day are to be accepted. One wrote that he gave an island to the Burgundian of his crew and another to the Genoese, “a barber of his from Castiglione, of Genoa.” And this writer adds, “both of them regard themselves counts.” Reports of his exploits and of the king’s further intentions were duly made known to rival courts by their envoys in England, and excited their jealousy.

The second expedition was provided for by the king’s license dated the third of February, 1497/8. This was a patent granted to John Cabot alone, the sons not being named. Hakluyt gives only the following record from the rolls:

“The king upon the third day of February, in the 13 yeere of his reigne, gave license to John Cabot to take sixe English ships in any haven or havens of the realme of England, being of the burden of 200 tunnes, or under, with all necessary furniture, and to take also into the said ships all such masters, mariners, and subjects of the king as willingly will go with him, &c.”

The patent itself did not find print till the nineteenth century. It was published for the first time in 1831, in the Memoirs of Sebastian Cabot, by Richard Biddle, an American lawyer of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, sometime resident in London, by whom, after painstaking search, it was found in the rolls. Quaint of style as well as of spelling, it runs as below:

“To all men to whom theis Presenteis shall come send Gretyng: know ye, that We of our Grace especiall, and for divers causes us movying We have geven and graunten, and by theis Presentis geve and graunte to our welbeloved John Kabotto, Venecian, sufficiente auctorite and power, that he, by him his Deputie or Deputies sufficient, may take at his pleasure VI Englisshe Shippes in any Porte or Portes or other place within this our Realme of England or obeisance, so that and if said Shippes be of the bourdeyn of C C tonnes or under with their apparail requisite and necessarie for the safe conduct of the said Shippes, and them convey and lede to the Londe [land] Isles of late founde by the seid John in oure name and by our commaundemente. Paying for theym and every of theym as if we should in or for our owen cause paye and noon [none] otherwise. An that the said John by him his Deputie or Deputies sufficiente, maye take and receyve into the said Shippes, and every of theym all such maisters, maryners, Pages, and other subjects of their owen free wille woll goo [would go] and passe with him in the same Shippes to the said Lande or Iles, without anye impedymente, lett or perturbance of any of our officers or ministres or subjects whatsoever they be by theym to the sayd John, his Deputie, or Deputies, and all other our seid subjects, or any of theym passinge with the sayd John in the said Shippes to the said Londe or Iles to be doon, or suffer to be doon or attempted. Geving in commaundemente to all and every our officers, ministres and subjects seying or herying theis our Lettres Patents, without any ferther commaudement by Us to theym or any of theym to be geven to perfourme and secour the said John, his Deputie and all our said Subjects so passyng with hym according to the tenor of theis our Lettres Patentis. Any Statute, Acte, or Ordennance to the contrarye made or to be made in any wise notwithstanding.”

Five ships were got together for this expedition. Three of them are supposed to have been furnished by Bristol merchants and two by the king; one chronicler, however, says that the Cabots contributed two. London merchants joined with Bristol men in the adventure. It was understood to be an enterprise for colonization combined with further discovery. The number of men enlisted for the voyage was placed at three hundred. Among them, as on the first voyage, were mariners experienced in venturesome undertakings. The fleet sailed off at the beginning of May, 1498. One of the ships, aboard of which was the priest, “Friar Buel,” put back to Ireland in distress. The other four continued the voyage.

With the departure from Bristol nothing more is heard of John Cabot. He drops out of sight instantly and mysteriously. Various conjectures as to his fate are entertained by the historians. Some contend that he died when about to set sail. But confronting this theory is a letter of the prothonotary, Don Pedro de Ayala, residing in London, to Ferdinand and Isabella, under date of July 25, 1498, reporting the sailing of the expedition. “His [the king’s] fleet consisted of five vessels which carried provisions for one year. It is said that one of them ... has returned to Ireland in great distress, the ship being much damaged. The Genoese [John Cabot, as appears in the text elsewhere] has continued the voyage.” If so important a man as John Cabot had now become had died before May and the departure of the expedition of which he was the acknowledged head, it is fairly reasoned that Ayala would have been aware of it. No shred of satisfactory information has rewarded the searcher for a solution of the problem. Nobody knows what became of him.

At this point Sebastian Cabot enters upon the scene in the leading part. That he started with the expedition there is no doubt. Doubtless he succeeded to its leadership as the “Deputie” of his father in accordance with the terms of the patent. The conduct of it and the discoveries that followed, big in import, were his from the outset.

Sebastian Cabot, though not over twenty-four, was an experienced mariner, and accomplished, like his father, in the science of navigation. He was full of ardour to achieve distinction as a discoverer. The news of Columbus’s exploits had kindled in his heart “a great flame of desire to attempt some notable thing.” As the master spirit of this second Cabot expedition and with its results his heart’s desire was splendidly attained; although the expedition was counted a failure by its backers, and the value of its discoveries to England was lost to the now indifferent king.

No contemporary account of this remarkable voyage was published, and historians have founded their descriptions of it mainly on reports of a much later period, derived from conversations with Sebastian Cabot at first, second, or third hand. These reports are contradictory in essential parts, and their authors confuse this second with the first expedition or treat the two as one voyage. Its story, as most satisfactorily picked out, runs practically in this wise: Sebastian steered first northwest and directed his course by Iceland. At length he came upon a formidable headland running to the north. This coast he followed for a great distance, expecting to find the passage to Cathay around it. In the month of July his ships were encountering “monstrous heaps” of ice floating in the water, and daylight was almost continual. At length failing to find any passage the ships’ prows were turned about and in course of time Newfoundland was reached, where the expedition sought refreshment. How far north Sebastian had penetrated it is impossible to determine from the conflicting statements. He himself is quoted as saying, twenty years and more afterward, that he was at fifty-six degrees when compelled to turn back. But modern authorities find presumptive evidence that he discovered Hudson’s Strait and gained the sixty-seventh degree through Fox’s Channel before he turned. From Newfoundland he sailed south, and coasted down along the North American coast, still hopeful of finding the much-sought-for passage, till, the company’s provisions falling short, he was obliged to take the homeward course. The southernmost point reached is as indefinite as the northern, but authorities generally agree that it was near thirty-six degrees, off North Carolina, or about the latitude of Gibraltar.

Cabot is declared by early writers to have named the “great land” along which he first coasted, assumed to be Newfoundland, “Baccaloas,” a German term then in use in the south of Europe for codfish, because of the multitudes of “big fish” found in the region. Later authorities, however, say that this name was applied by Portuguese navigators who came after Cabot. The name subsequently settled down upon a small island on the east coast of Newfoundland. It seems to be agreed that landings were made by Cabot’s company at several points. The natives, probably of Newfoundland, were seen dressed in beasts’ skins, and they were found making use of copper. Great sailors’ yarns were spun about the abundance of the fish of the region, so great that “the progress of the ships were sometimes impeded by them.” Bears, of which there were a plenty, were accustomed to feed on the fish, plunging into the sea and catching them with their claws.

Just when the expedition reached the home port of Bristol is not known. It was expected back in September; it had not arrived in October. There is no printed record of its arrival. Not having been successful in finding the passage and reaching Cathay, it was regarded as a failure by its princely and mercantile backers. The king, too, was found to have lost his interest in western discovery or colonization. He was most deeply engrossed in domestic affairs. “Great tumults” were happening, “occasioned by the rising of the common people and the war in Scotland.” Moreover, this Henry was now concerned in the pending Spanish alliance and he was loath to run counter to the Pope’s Bull of 1493. The geographical value of the Cabot discoveries was unappreciated, and no more talk was then heard of further western voyaging.

Sebastian Cabot himself was not at that time aware that his father and he had discovered a continent. His opinion was that all of the north part of America was divided into islands.

VII
THE ENGLISH CLAIM TO AMERICA

Hakluyt reproduces the several conflicting accounts of the two Cabot voyages extant in his day and marshals them as the “testimonies” confirming the English claim to North America. They are thus summarized in his catalogue of contents of the Principal Navigations.

“The first taken out of the mappe of Sebastian Cabota cut by Clement Adames;

“the second used by Galeacius Butrigarius the Popes legate, and reported by him;

“the third out of the preface of Baptista Ramusius [Giovanni Battista Ramusio] before his third volume of Navigations;

“the 4. out of the thirde decade of Peter Martyr ab Angleria;

“the 5. out of the general history of Lopez de Gomara

“and the 6. out of Fabians Chronicle.”

The first “testimonie” is from a map which Hakluyt saw in the queen’s privy gallery at Westminster, and of which copies were also to be seen in several country houses of “ancient merchants.” It was attributed to Sebastian Cabot, but whether it was actually his has been a much discussed question by historical writers. Clement Adams was not an engraver but a learned schoolmaster. His “cut” was apparently an inscription from data furnished by Cabot. It was in Latin and is supposed to have been made in the year 1549. This is the extract as Hakluyt gives it:

“In the yere of our Lord 1497 John Cabot a Venetian, and his sonne Sebastian (with an English fleet set out from Bristoll) discovered that land which no man before that time had attempted, on the 24 of June, about five of the clocke early in the morning. This land he called Prima vista, that is to say, First seene, because as I suppose it was that part whereof they had the first sight from sea. That Island which lieth out before the land, he called the Island of S. John upon this occasion, as I thinke, because it was discovered upon the day of John the Baptist. The inhabitants of this Island use to weare beasts skinnes, and have them in as great estimation as we have our finest garments. In their warres they use bowes, arrowes, pikes, darts, woodden clubs, and slings. The soile is barren in some places, & yeeldeth litle fruit, but it is full of white beares and stagges farre greater then ours. It yeeldeth plenty of fish, and those very great, as seales, and those which commonly we call salmons: there are soles also above a yard in length: but especially there is great abundance of that kinde of fish which the Savages call baccalaos. In the same Island also there breed hauks, but they are so blacke that they are very like to ravens, as also their partridges, and egles [eagles] which are in like sort blacke.”

Here is seen the first mixture of the two expeditions and the observations of their masters.

The second “testimonie” is comprised in a report of a talk among a group of Italian savans at the villa of Hieronymo Fracastor, a maker of globes, at Caphi, near Verona. The principal speaker, “a most profound philosopher and mathematician,” but not named, discoursed about Sebastian Cabot and related an interview had with Cabot some years before at Seville, in which he described his adventures in detail. The identification of the speaker as “Galeacius Butrigarius, the Pope’s legate” in Spain, was copied by Hakluyt, it is said, from Richard Eden. But this has been shown to have been an error, the fact being ascertained that Butrigarius died some years before the gathering at Fracastor’s villa. Hakluyt reproduces the animated tale from Ramusio’s second book of voyages, the caption being his own:

"A discourse of Sebastain Cabot touching his discovery of part of the West India out of England in the time of King Henry the seventh, used to Galeacius Butrigarius the Popes Legate in Spaine, and reported by the sayd Legate in this sort.

"Doe you not understand sayd he (speaking to certaine Gentlemen of Venice) how to passe to India toward the Northwest, as did of late a citizen of Venice, so valiant a man, and so well practised in all things pertaining to navigations, and the science of Cosmographie, that at this present he hath not his like in Spaine, insomuch that for his vertues he is preferred above all other pilots that saile to the West Indies, who may not passe thither without his licence, and is therefore called Piloto mayor, that is, the grand Pilot. And when we sayd that we knew him not, he proceeded, saying, that being certaine yeres in the city of Sivil, and desirous to have some knowledge of the navigations of the Spanyards, it was tolde him that there was in the city a valiant man, a Venetian borne named Sebastian Cabot, who had the charge of those things, being an expert man in that science, and one that coulde make Cardes [charts] for the Sea with his owne hand, and that by this report, seeking his acquaintance, hee found him a very gentle person, who entertained him friendly, and shewed him many things, and among other a large Mappe of the world, with certaine particular Navigations, as well of the Portugals [Portuguese] as of the Spaniards, and that he spake further unto him to this effect.

"‘When my father departed from Venice many yeres since to dwell in England, to follow the trade of marchandises, hee tooke mee with him to the citie of London, while I was very yong, yet having neverthelesse some knowledge of letters of humanitie and of the Sphere. And when my father died in that time when newes was brought that Don Christopher Colonus Genuese had discovered the coasts of India, whereof was great talke in all the Court of king Henry the 7. who then raigned, insomuch that all men with great admiration affirmed it to be a thing more divine than humane, to saile by the West into the East where spices growe, by a way that was never knowen before, by this fame and report there increased in my heart a great flame of desire to attempt some notable thing. And understanding by reason of the Sphere, that if I should saile by way of the Northwest, I should by a shorter tract come into India, I thereupon caused the King to be advertised of my devise, who immediately commanded two Carvels to bee furnished with all things appertayning to the voyage, which was as farre as I remember in the yeere 1496 [sic] in the beginning of Sommer.

“‘I began therefore to saile toward the Northwest, not thinking to finde any other land then that of Cathay, & from thence to turne toward India, but after certaine dayes I found that the land ranne towards the North, which was to mee a great displeasure. Neverthelesse, sayling along by the coast to see if I could finde any gulfe that turned, I found the lande still continent to the 56. degree under our Pole. And seeing that there the coast turned toward the East, despairing to finde the passage, I turned backe againe, and sailed downe by the coast of that land toward the Equinoctiall (ever with intent to finde the saide passage to India) and came to that part of this firme lande which is nowe called Florida, where my victuals failing, I departed from thence and returned into England, where I found great tumult among the people and preparation for warre in Scotland: by reason whereof there was no more consideration had to this voyage.’”

Here again the two voyages are confused; and besides, the date, 1496, is wrong, and John Cabot is ignored. This would reflect upon the veracity and generosity of Sebastian Cabot, were it not more than likely that the reporter bungled, or that the accuracy of the statement suffered through repetition. It is also to be taken into account that the interview was had half a century after the events, and when Sebastian Cabot was an old man.

The remainder of the interview touches briefly upon Sebastian Cabot’s exploits of later years for Spain, and again, for England, and closes cheerily: “... And waxing olde, I give my selfe to rest from such travels, because there are nowe many yong and lustie Pilots and Mariners of good experience, by whose forwardnesse I doe rejoyce in the fruit of my labours, and rest with the charge of this office, as you see.”

The third testimony, from Ramusio’s preface to his third volume, which was published in 1563, contrasts the Cabot voyages with those subsequently made for the king of France, which established “New France” in North America:

“In the latter part of this volume are put certaine relations of John de Vararzana [Verrazzano], Florentine, and of a great captaine a Frenchman, and the two voyages of Jaques Cartier a Briton [of Brittany], who sailed unto the land situate in 50 degrees of latitude to the North, which is called New France, which landes hitherto are not throughly knowen, whether they doo joyne with the firme land of Florida and Nova Hispania, or whether they bee separated and divided all by the Sea as Ilands: and whether that by that way we may goe by Sea unto the countrey of Cathaia. As many yeeres past it was written unto mee by Sebastian Cabota our Countrey man, a Venetian, a man of great experience, and very rare in the art of Navigation, and the knowledge of Cosmographie, who sailed along and beyond this lande of New France, at the charges of King Henry the seventh king of England: and he advertised mee that having sailed a long time West by North, beyond those Ilands unto the Latitude of 67 degrees and an halfe under the North pole, and at the 11 day of June finding still the open Sea without any maner of impediment, he thought verily by that way to have passed on still the way to Cathaia, which is in the East, and would have done it, if the mutinie of the shipmaster and Mariners had not hindered him and made him to returne homeward from that place. But it seemeth that God doeth yet still reserve this great enterprise for some great prince to discover this voyage of Cathaia by this way, which for the bringing of the Spiceries from India into Europe, were the most easie and shortest of all other wayes hitherto found out. And surely this enterprise would be the most glorious, and of most importance of all other that can be imagined to make his name great, and fame immortall, to all ages to come, farre more then can be done by any of all these great troubles and warres which dayly are used in Europe among the miserable Christian people.”

The fourth testimony is the most important of the six, being an account by Peter Martyr drawn directly from Sebastian Cabot’s statements to him. The Third Decade of Martyr’s history of the New World, from which Hakluyt takes it, was first printed in Seville, in 1516. At the time of Martyr’s writing Sebastian Cabot was in Spain, in the Spanish king’s service, and, as the text shows, an intimate friend of Martyr’s. This being the first printed account of the Cabot voyages, American historians based their relations of them upon it till its several inaccuracies were disclosed by other data. Hakluyt presents it in full as below.

"These North Seas have bene searched by one Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian borne, whom being yet but in maner an infant, his parents caried with them into England, having occasion to resort thither for trade of marchandise, as is the maner of the Venetians to leave no part of the world unsearched to obtaine riches. Hee therefore furnished two ships in England at his owne charges, and first with 300 men directed his course so far towards the North pole, that even in the moneth of July he found monstrous heapes of ice swimming on the sea, and in maner continuall day light, yet saw he the land in that tract free from ice, which had bene molten by the heat of the Sunne. Thus seeing such heapes of yce before him, hee was enforced to turne his sailes and follow the West, so coasting still to the shore, that he was thereby brought so farre into the South, by reason of the land bending so much Southward, that it was there almost equall in latitude, with the sea Fretum Herculeum [Straits of Hercules], having the Northpole elevate in maner in the same degree. He sailed likewise in this tract so farre towards the West, that hee had the Island of Cuba on his left hand, in maner in the same degree of longitude. As hee traveiled by the coastes of this great land (which he named Baccalaos) he saith that hee found the like course of the waters toward the West, but the same to runne more softly and gently then the swift waters which the Spaniards found in their Navigations Southward. Wherefore it is not onely more like to be true, but ought also of necessitie to be concluded that betweene both the lands hitherto unknowen, there should be certaine great open places whereby the waters should thus continually passe from the East unto the West: which waters I suppose to be driven about the globe of the earth by the uncessant moving and impulsion of the heavens, and not to bee swallowed up and cast up againe by the breathing of Demagorgœn, as some have imagined, because they see the seas by increase and decrease to ebbe and flowe.

"Sebastian Cabot himselfe named those lands Baccalaos, because that in the Seas thereabout hee found so great multitudes of certaine bigge fishes much like unto Tunies (which the inhabitants call Baccalaos) that they sometimes stayed his shippe. He found also the people of those regions covered with beastes skinnes, yet not without the use of reason. He also saith there is great plentie of Beares in those regions which use to eate fish: for plunging themselves into ye water, where they perceive a multitude of these fishes to be, they fasten their clawes into their scales and so draw them to land and eate them, so (as he saith) the Beares being thus satisfied with fish, are not noisome to men. Hee declareth further, that in many places of these Regions he saw great plentie of Copper among the inhabitants.

“Cabot is my very friend, whom I use familiarly, and delight to have him sometimes keepe mee company in mine owne house. For being called out of England by the commandement of the Catholique King of Castile, after the death of King Henry the seventh of that name King of England, he was made one of our councill and Assistants, as touching the affaires of the new Indies, looking for ships dayly to be furnished for him to discover this hid secret of Nature.”

The fifth testimony, out of Gomara’s “General History,” is the following extract from a history of the West Indies published in 1552–1553. Francisco Lopez de Gomara was a priest, sometime chaplain of Hernando Cortes, and was one of the most distinguished historical writers of Spain in his time.

"The testimonie of Francis Lopez de Gomara, a Spaniard, in the fourth Chapter of the second Booke of his generall history of the West Indies concerning the first discoverie of a great part of the West Indies, to wit, from 58 to 38 degrees of latitude, by Sebastian Cabota out of England.

“He which brought most certaine newes of the countrey & people of Baccalaos, saith Gomara, was Sebastian Cabote a Venetian, which rigged up two ships at the cost of K. Henry the 7 of England, having great desire to traffique for the spices as the Portingales did. He carried with him 300 men, and tooke the way towards Island [Iceland] from beyond the Cape of Labrador, untill he found himselfe in 58 degrees and better. He made relation that in the moneth of July it was so cold, and the ice so great, that hee durst not passe any further: that the dayes were very long, in a maner without any night, and for that short night that they had, it was very cleare. Cabot feeling the cold, turned towards the West, refreshing himselfe at Bacalaos: and afterwards he sayled along the coast unto 38 degrees, and from thence he shaped his course to returne into England.”

The sixth is this brief passage from the Chronicle of Robert Fabian, “sometime alderman of London,” which Hakluyt received in manuscript from John Stow, the famous London antiquarian and annalist:

"A note of Sebastian Cabots first discoverie of part of the Indies taken out of the latter part of Robert Fabians Chronicle not hitherto printed, which is in the custodie of M. John Stow a diligent preserver of Antiquities.

“In the 13 yeere of K. Henry the 7 (by meanes of one John Cabot a Venetian which made himselfe very expert and cunning in knowledge of the circuit of the world and Ilands of the same, as by a Sea card and other demonstrations reasonable he shewed) the king caused to man and victuall a ship at Bristow [Bristol] to search for an Island which he said hee knew well was rich, and replenished with great commodities: Which shippe thus manned and victualed at the kings cost, divers Marchants of London ventured in her small stocks, being in her as chiefe patron the said Venetian. And in the company of the said ship, sailed also out of Bristow three or foure small ships fraught with sleght and grosse marchandises, as course cloth, caps, laces, points & other trifles. And so departed from Bristow in the beginning of May, of whom in this Maiors [mayor’s] time returned no tidings.”

The following mention, by “the foresaid Robert Fabian,” “of three Savages which Cabot brought home and presented unto the King in the foureteenth yere of his raigne,” is given as a sort of supplementary testimony (the authenticity of which is questioned by Richard Biddle, Sebastian Cabot’s biographer, who charges this kidnapping of natives upon a later navigator):

“This yeere also were brought unto the King three men taken in the Newfound Island that before I spake of, in William Purchas time being Maior: These were clothed in beasts skins, & did eate raw flesh, and spake such speach that no man could understand them, and in their demeanour like to brute beastes, whom the King kept a time after. Of the which upon two yeeres after, I saw two apparelled after the manner of Englishmen in Westminster pallace, which that time I could not discerne from Englishmen, til I was learned what they were, but as for speach I heard none of them utter one word.”

And the whole is preceded by that legend of the first discovery of the West Indies by Madoc the Welshman, in the year 1170, which is cast in apparently for what it may be worth.

VIII
VENTURES IN THE CABOTS’ TRACK

In the illustrious year of 1498, which witnessed Sebastian Cabot’s westward discoveries along North America, and Columbus’s sighting of South America, Vasco da Gama, pursuing his eastward navigations, crossed the Indian Ocean, dropped anchor off the city of Calicut, on the Malagar coast, and set up on shore a marble pillar as proof of his discovery of India by an ocean highway. Thus Portugal offset Spain’s claim to the West Indies by priority of discovery, with a claim through first discovery to the East Indies, and stood ready to assert it, while England allowed her right, by the same token, in the North American continent to lapse.

Spain and Portugal continued in sharp rivalry during the half decade immediately following. In 1499 the coast of South America was touched at about Surinam by the Spaniard Alonzo de Ojeda and the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci, sailing for Spain. The same year the coast of Brazil was discovered by a Portuguese navigator, Vincente Yarez Pinzon. He had been a companion of Columbus. The next year possession of Brazil was taken for the crown of Portugal by Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese commander, who was driven to its coast by adverse winds when making a voyage to India by Vasco da Gama’s course. Three years later a settlement was begun there by Amerigo Vespucci, now in the service of Portugal. In 1500 Gaspar de Cortereal, Portuguese, attempted to follow the Cabots’ track of discovery opened in the northwest. Coming upon the coast of Labrador he explored it for six hundred miles. He discovered Nova Scotia, the St. Lawrence, and also Hudson’s Strait. Then he returned to Lisbon with his two caravals freighted with natives—men, women, and children—whom he had captured and brought home for slavery. The next year Cortereal departed on a second voyage for further discovery and presumably more slaves, and was never more heard from. His brother, Michael de Cortereal, sailed in search of him, and also was lost. Then two armed ships were sent out by the king of Portugal to search for both brothers; but no trace of either could be found. It was finally assumed that both fell victims to the vengeance of the natives for the thefts of their people. Upon the strength of Gaspar de Cortereal’s voyages Portugal attempted to establish a claim to the discovery of Newfoundland and the adjacent coast of North America. But in this she was not successful. Spain, however, held firmly to all of her American possessions, indefinitely defined.

England remained passive till 1501, when a new movement was started in the Cabots’ home city of Bristol. Three Bristol merchants—Richard Ward, Thomas Ashehurst, and John Thomas—and three Portuguese mariners—John Fernandus, Francis Fernandus, and John Gundlur—came together for a venture in the track of the Cabots. A patent was obtained from King Henry, under date of March 19, 1501, which conferred upon them the same powers that had originally been given the Cabots, and was in terms similar to the Cabot patents. Whether they sent out an expedition that year is not known. The next year, however, the personnel of the company had changed, with the dropping of Ward and Thomas and the substitution of Hugh Eliot in their place; and under this organization, probably in 1503, a voyage was made which resulted in discovery at Newfoundland and along the Labrador coast. The only record of this voyage is given by Hakluyt in the following excerpt from the merchant Robert Thorne’s “Booke” of 1527, addressed to the English Ambassador at the court of Spain:

"A briefe extract concerning the discoverie of Newfound-land taken out of the booke of M. Robert Thorne, to Doctor Leigh &c.

“I reason that as some sickenesses are hereditarie, so this inclination or desire of this discovery I inherited from my father, which with another marchant of Bristol named Hugh Eliot, were the discoverers of the Newfound-lands; of the which there is no doubt (as nowe plainely appeareth) if the Mariners would then have bene ruled, and followed their Pilots minde, but the lands of the West Indies, from whence all the golde commeth, had bene ours; for all is one coast as the Card appeareth, and is aforesaid.”

The “card” here referred to was a rude map of the world on which, along the line of the coast of Labrador, was written the inscription in Latin, “This land was first discovered by the English.” A short time after this voyage the fisheries about Newfoundland had become well known to Frenchmen, and were being frequented by the hardy fishermen of Brittany and Normandy. Hence the later name of the isle of Cape Breton.

No further patents for English navigations were issued for more than half a century. Still English interest in maritime discovery and commercial advancement was not altogether stagnant during this period. Early in Henry the eighth’s reign quite a promising enterprise was set on foot by Sebastian Cabot, then back in England, and in high standing for his knowledge in cosmography. He had been in Spain for seven years (having entered Spain’s service three years after the death of Henry the seventh, which occurred in 1509), acting part of that time as one of the council of the Indies, and latterly completing plans for a new expedition for the search of the Northwest passage under the Spanish flag, which he had been compelled to abandon by Ferdinand’s death, in 1516. Returned to England he had found Henry the eighth hospitable to his scheme and had induced him to fit out a small squadron for its pursuit. The supreme command, however, was given to another,—Sir Thomas Pert, at that time vice-admiral of England,—and this proved disastrous to the enterprise; for, it is recorded, Sir Thomas’s “faint heart was the cause that the voyage took none effect.” All that the expedition accomplished was a visit to the coast of Brazil, to San Domingo, and to Porto Rico, whence it returned to England. Hakluyt gives a narration which he supposes to relate to this voyage, written by the Spanish historian Gonzalo de Oviedo, and reprinted by Ramusio, from whom he translates it:

“In the yeere 1517 an English Rover under the colour of travelling to discover, came with a great shippe unto the parts of Brasill on the coast of the firme land, and from thence he crossed over unto this Iland of Hispaneola, and arrived neere unto the mouth of the haven of this citie of S. Domingo, and sent his shipboate full of men on shoare and demaunded leave to enter into this haven, saying that hee came with marchandise to traffique. But at that very instant the governour of the castle, Francis de Tapia, caused a tire of ordinance to be shot from the castle at the ship, for she bare in directly with the haven. When the Englishmen sawe this, they withdrew themselves out, and those that were in the shipboate got themselves with all speede on shipboord. And in trueth the warden of the castle committed an oversight: for if the shippe had entred into the haven the men thereof could not have come on lande without leave both of the citie and of the castle. Therefore the people of the ship seeing how they were received sayled toward the Iland of S. John, and entring into the port of S. Germaine, the English men parled [parleyed] with those of the towne, requiring victuals and things needefull to furnish their ship, and complained of the inhabitants of the city of S. Domingo saying that they came not to doe any harme but to trade and traffique for their money and merchandise. In this place they had certaine victuals and for recompense they gave and paid them with certaine vessell of wrought tinne and other things. And afterward they departed toward Europe....”

KING HENRY VIII.
From a photograph, copyrighted by Walker and Boutall, of a painting.

Hakluyt resents Oviedo’s use of the term “Rover” in this account and his assumption that the object of the expedition was other than discovery and traffic, remarking tartly that Spanish and Portuguese writers “account all other nations for Pirates, rovers, and thieves who visit any heathen coast that they have once sailed by or looked on.”

With the failure of this enterprise Cabot again left England and reëntered the service of Spain, taking the post of “pilot major.”

IX
THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE

Later in Henry the eighth’s reign, in 1527, a larger expedition, composed of “divers cunning men,” set out for Northern discovery, but with no more satisfactory results. Their enterprise was impelled by the weighty reasoning of Robert Thorne, the observant Bristol merchant, then in Seville (whom Hakluyt terms a “notable member and ornament of his country”), in his “large discourse” of that year to Dr. Ley, the English ambassador in Spain, urging the immediate need of English discovery in the north parts, “even to the North pole,” to overcome the advantages gained by Spain and Portugal in their discoveries of “all the Indies and seas Occidental and Oriental,” so “by this part of the Orient and Occident” compassing the world. Who were the “divers cunning men” composing this expedition Hakluyt endeavoured to ascertain through much enquiry among “such as by their years and delight in Navigation” might inform him. He learned, however, of one only, and his name he could not get—a certain canon of St. Paul’s in London, a “great mathematician, and indued with wealth,” apparently the leader. Two “fair ships” formed the squadron, one of them called “The Dominus Vobiscum[Vobiscum].” They set forth out of the Thames on a mid-May day. When sailing “far northwestward” one of the ships was cast away as it entered into “a dangerous gulph about the great opening between the North parts of Newfoundland and the country lately called by her Majestie Meta Incognita.” Thereupon the other ship, “shaping her course toward Cape Briton and the coaste of Arambec, and oftentimes putting their men on land to search the state of those regions, returned home about the beginning of October.” So this story lamely ends.

Six years later an enterprise for discovery in the same parts was projected by certain London men, with the king’s “favour and good countenance,” under the leadership of one “Master Hore,” a “man of goodly stature and of great courage, and given to the studie of Cosmographie.” Master Hore’s “persuasions” were so effective that he soon drew into the scheme “many gentlemen of the Inns of court and of the Chancerie, and divers others of good worship, desirous to see the strange things of the world.” Two “tall ships” were obtained for the venture, the “Trinitie,” of one hundred and forty tons, which was designated the “admiral” (flag-ship) of the fleet, and the “Minion.” The company numbered about sixscore persons, of whom thirty were gentlemen. Among the latter were enrolled one Armigil Wade, “a very learned and vertuous gentleman,” afterward clerk of the councils of Henry the eighth and his successor, Edward the sixth; one Joy, subsequently gentleman of the king’s chapel; and Oliver Dawbeny, a merchant of London. All were “mustered in warlike manner” at Gravesend. After receiving the Sacrament they embarked and sailed away at the end of April, 1536. The adventures of these gentlemen-explorers were rare and tragic.

From the time that they left Gravesend they were more than two months at sea without touching land. At length they arrived in the region of Cape Breton. Shaping their course northwestward they came to the “island of Penguin,” where they landed. This was found to be a place “full of rocks and stones” and inhabited by flocks of “great foules white and gray, as big as geese.” These strange fowls were the sea-birds known as Penguins from their first discovery on this island, and afterward, when appearing in other parts, called Great Auks or Gare-Fowls. The sailors drove large numbers of them into the boats, and they made good eating. Quantities of their eggs were also seen on the island. No natives were encountered by the voyagers till they had lain anchored off Newfoundland for several days. Then one morning while Oliver Dawbeny was walking on the hatches he spied a boat full of savages rowing down the bay toward the ships. A ship’s boat was quickly manned and sent out to meet and take them. But at its approach the savages fled to a neighbouring island up the bay. The English pursued them, but they got away. On the island a fire was found, and by it the side of a bear on a wooden spit ready for roasting. A boot of leather was picked up, “garnished on the outward side of the calf with certain brave trails as it were of raw silke”; also a “great warm mitten.” The voyagers tarried in the Newfoundland seas till famine came upon them.

Now the tale becomes gruesome. Temporary relief was had from the stock of a nest of an osprey “that brought hourly to her young great plentie of divers sort of fish.” For a while they lived on raw herbs and roots gathered on the main. Then, the relief from herbs becoming of “little purpose,” some of the hardest pressed, when ashore in companies of two, seeking food, fell to feeding upon their mates. “The fellow killed his mate while he stooped to take up a root for his relief, and cutting out pieces of his body whom he had murthered broyled the same on the coles [fire] and greedily devoured them.” By this means, the chronicler grimly adds, “the company decreased.” The officers on shipboard wondered at this falling off till the fate of the missing was disclosed through the admission of one well-fed sailor, under the goading taunts of a starving mate who had come upon him in a field, drawn thither by the pungent odour of broiled flesh, that the meat upon which he had feasted was a piece of a man’s side.

When this report was brought to the captain he called the company together and addressed them earnestly upon the awfulness of such conduct. “If,” he piously argued, “it had not pleased God to have helpen [helped] them in that distresse that it had been better to have perished in body and to have lived everlastingly, than to have relieved for a poore time their mortal bodyes and to bee condemned everlastingly both body and soule to the unquenchable fire of hell.” He besought them all to pray “that it might please God to look upon their miserable present state and for his own mercy to relieve the same.” Still the famine continued unrelieved. At last, in sheer desperation, “they agreed amongst themselves rather than all should perish to cast lots who should be killed.” But the very night of this agreement, “such was the mercie of God” that a French ship well furnished with victuals hove into the harbour where they lay. Their action was prompt. “Such was the policy of the English,” as our chronicler ingenuously puts it, “that they became masters” of the Frenchmen’s craft, “and changing ships and victualling them they set sail to come into England.” In blunter words, they despoiled the Frenchmen of their property and made off with it, leaving them behind; not altogether desolate, however, for they were left with a ship partly provisioned from their own store.

The expedition arrived back in England about the end of October, when the gentlemen of the party enjoyed a succession of entertainments, first at a “certain castle belonging to Sir John Luttrell,” afterward at Bath, Bristol, and London. The voyagers told in their reports how they had journeyed so far northward that they had seen “mighty islands of ice in the summer season on which were hawkes and other fowles to rest themselves being weary of flying over far from the main.” And how they had also seen “certain great white fowles with red bills and red legs somewhat bigger than herons which they supposed to be storkes.” Some months later the despoiled Frenchmen had got back to their home port, and they appeared in England with complaint to the king and demand for redress. After an examination of the matter, however, the king was “so moved to pity” by the tale of the distress of the Englishmen, which was shown to be the occasion of their high-handed act, that “he punished not his subjects, but of his own purse made full and royal recompense unto the French.” Which was certainly generous as should become a king.

The account of this voyage was the one that Hakluyt travelled two hundred miles on horseback to get from the sole survivor of the company living at the time of his writing, or, in his own words, “to learn the whole truth of this voyage from his own mouth as being the only man now alive that was in this discovery.” He was Thomas Buts, a son of Sir William Buts of Norfolk. Hakluyt relates that upon his return from the voyage Buts was so changed in appearance through the hunger and misery he had undergone that his parents did not recognize him as their son till they found a secret mark on his person, “which was a wart upon one of his knees.”

With the accession of Edward the sixth, the boy king, in 1547, new projects began to develop for further discovery northward. Sebastian Cabot was again in England and settled at Bristol. He was now an old man, yet still stalwart in mind and red-blooded for action. His fame was widespread and he had come to be called “The Great Seaman.” While pilot major of Spain, he had, with other achievements, made important discoveries in South America. Heading an expedition originally planned to pursue discovery in the Pacific, through the Strait of Magellan (discovered and passed by that brilliant Portuguese, Fernao de Magalhães, in 1520, who the next year discovered the Philippines), he had explored the River Plate, naming it Rio de la Plata, the Silver River, because of the splendour of the silver ornaments worn by the Indians of the region, and had anchored off the site of the present city of Buenos Ayres; had built a fort at one of the mouths of the Parana and begun a settlement there; had further ascended the Parana; penetrated the Paraguay; and thence entered the Vermejo, where he and his party had a fierce fight with the savages. In Edward’s second year, 1549, he was appointed Grand Pilot of England, with an annual pension of £166 13s. and 6d. in consideration of the “good and acceptable service done and to be done” by him for the English crown.

Not long after he is found turning from the Northwest Passage and advising a new voyage for the discovery of a Northeast route to India.

From this a project of various London merchant adventurers developed which resulted in an expedition in 1553 starting under Sir Hugh Willoughby and continued by Richard Chancellor, which, although failing to find Cathay, made notable discoveries with the opening to Europe of the great empire of Russia.

X
THE OPENING OF RUSSIA

The Willoughby-Chancellor voyage was planned with much thoroughness, specifically for the expansion of trade. It was the outcome of the deliberations of “certaine grave Citizens of London and men of great wisdome and carefull for the good of their Countrey” seeking means to revive commercial affairs which had fallen into a dismal state. English commodities had come to be in small request by neighbouring peoples. “Merchandises” (as the term was) which foreigners in former times eagerly sought were now neglected and their prices lowered, although the goods were carried by the English traders to the foreign ports; while all foreign products were “in great account and their prices wonderfully raised.” Meanwhile English merchants had seen the wealth of Spaniards and Portuguese marvellously increase through the repeated discoveries of new countries and new trades for their nations. So these grave and wise citizens came at last to realize the imperative need of a similar course for England if she were to keep pace with her rivals: practically to adopt the policy which Robert Thorne had so sagely pressed a quarter of a century before.

Having resolved upon a “new and strange navigation” they first of all brought Sebastian Cabot into their councils, and forming a company chose him their head. “After much speech and conference together” it was decided that three ships should be prepared for discovery in the northern parts of the world to open the way for Englishmen to unknown kingdoms northeastward. The three ships were duly obtained, for the most part newly built craft of “very strong and well-seasoned planks.” One at least of them was made especially staunch by “an excellent and ingenious invention,” described as “the covering of a piece of keel with thin sheets of lead.” This is supposed to have been the first instance in England of the practice of sheathing. It had, however, been adopted in Spain nearly forty years before. The ships were well furnished with armours and artillery, and were victualled with supplies for eighteen months. They were severally: the “Bona Esperanza,” of one hundred and twenty tons, designated admiral (flag-ship) of the fleet, the “Edward Bonaventure,” one hundred and sixty tons, and the “Bona Confidentia,” ninety tons. Each was provided with a pinnace and a boat.

After securing the ships the next care was the selection of captains for the expedition. Many men of standing offered themselves for the headship. Among these most urgent for the appointment was Sir Hugh Willoughby, “a most valiant gentleman and well born.” Sir Hugh was chosen on account of his “goodly personage”—he appears to have been an exceptionally tall man—and for his “singular skill in the service of warre.” He had served under the Earl of Hertford, afterward the Duke of Somerset, in the expedition of 1544 against Scotland, and had received the honour of knighthood at Leith; and during the invasions of 1547–1549 he held a commission on the border, and was sometime captain of Lowther Castle. Afterward his “thoughts turned to the sea” through his association with naval men and his friendship with Sebastian Cabot. The title given him was captain-general of the Fleet. For second in command, also drawn from several candidates, Richard Chancellor was elected and named pilot-general. He was given the charge of the “Edward Bonaventure” as captain. Chancellor had been bred up in the household of Henry Sidney, the father of Sir Philip Sidney. He was strongly endorsed as a man of “great estimation for many good partes of wit in him.” In the prime of life, he had the advantage of an excellent reputation for knowledge of the sea with a genius for adventure. As masters of the several ships, William Gefferson was appointed for the “Bona Esperanza,” Stephen Borough (afterward chief pilot of England) for the “Edward Bonaventure,” and Cornelius Durfoorth for the “Bona Confidentia.” The captain-general, the pilot-general, the three ships’ masters, the minister—Master Richard Stafford—two of the merchants and one of the “gentlemen” joining the expedition, and the three masters’ mates, were designated a board of twelve counsellors for the voyage.

An elaborate book of orders and instructions for the conduct of the fleet was compiled by Cabot; while the king provided a letter, written in Latin, Greek, and other languages, designed for presentation to any potentate whom the voyagers might come across in journeying “toward the mighty empire of Cathay,” but most liberally addressed “to all Kings, Princes, Rulers, Judges, and Governours of the earth, and all others having any excellent dignity on the same in all places under the universall heaven.”

Hakluyt gives the text of both of these documents. Cabot’s book comprised thirty-three items, as a whole well illustrating his ripe judgment and good seamanship. Particularly wise were his instructions as to the attitude of the voyagers toward new peoples whom they might discover. “Every nation and region is to be considered advisedly.” The natives were not to be provoked by “any disdaine, laughing, contempt, or such like,” but were to be used with “prudent circumspection, with all gentlenes and courtesie.” “For as much,” he shrewdly observed, “as our people and shippes may appear unto them strange and wondrous, and their’s also to ours: it is to be considered how they may be used, learning much of their natures and dispositions by some one such person [native] as you may first either allure or take to be brought aboord of your ships, and there to learn as you may, without violence or force.” The native so taken to be “well entertained, used and apparelled; to be set on the land to the intent that he or she may allure other to draw nigh to shew the commodities.” But the succeeding instruction was vicious, though in accord with the brutality of the age: “and if the person taken may be made drunke with your beere or wine you shall know the secrets of his heart.”

The king’s letter-missive defined the voyage to be purely a commercial affair. It was an expedition by sea “into farre Countreis to the intent that betweene our people and them a way may be opened to bring in and cary out merchandises.” It was to seek in the countries that might be found heretofore unknown “as well such things as we lacke, as also to cary unto them from our regions such things as they lacke.” So “not onely commoditie may ensue both to them and to us, but also an indissoluble and perpetuall league of friendship be established betweene us both.” Free passage was asked for the voyagers through their dominions, with the assurance that nothing of theirs should be touched by the visitors unwillingly to them; and the same hospitality that they would expect their subjects to receive should they at any time pass by the regions of the English king.

The fleet started from Ratcliffe at the time appointed for the departure, the tenth of May (according to Willoughby’s journal, other accounts say the twentieth) and dropped down the Thames by easy stages. On the “Esperanza” with Sir Hugh were the larger number of merchants. The minister was on the “Edward Bonaventure”; and among the seamen of the latter was William Borough, the younger brother of the ship’s master, a lusty youth of sixteen, who afterward became comptroller of the queen’s navy. The spectacle of the passage by Greenwich, where the court was then seated at the ancient royal palace, is vividly portrayed by the historian of Chancellor’s exploits on this voyage, Clement Adams, the schoolmaster:

“The greater shippes are towed downe with boates, and oares, and the mariners being all apparelled in Watchet, or skie coloured cloth, rowed amaine and made way with diligence. And being come neere Greenewich (where the court then lay) presently upon the newes thereof the Courtiers came running out, and the common people flockt together standing very thicke upon the shoare: the privie Counsel, they lookt out at the windowes of the Court, and the rest ranne up to the toppes of the towers: the shippes hereupon discharge their Ordinance, and shoot off their pieces after the maner of warre, and of the sea, insomuch that the tops of the hilles sounded therewith, the valleys and the waters gave an Echo, and the Mariners, they shouted in such sort that the skie rang again with the noyse thereof. One stoode in the poope of the ship, and by his jesture bids farewell to his friends in the best maner he could. Another walks upon the hatches, another climbes the shrowdes, another stands upon the maine yarde, and another in the top of the shippe.”

The boy king heard the parting salute but he did not see the show, for he lay in his chamber gravely ill of consumption. And a fortnight after the ships had taken the sea, he died.

The fleet tarried some time off Harwich and did not finally get away till the twenty-third of June. By the middle of July Heligoland, in the North Sea, was reached and visited. Next, Röst Island, where another short stay was made. Next, on the twenty-seventh of July, anchors were dropped at one of the Lofoden Islands, and there the voyagers remained for three days, finding the isle “plentifully inhabited” by “very gentle people.” Next they coasted along these islands north-northwest till the second of August, when they attempted to make another harbour, having arranged with a native, who came out to them in a skiff for a pilot to conduct them to “Wardhouse” (Vardohuus), an island haven off Finmark, with a “castle,” then a rendezvous of northern mariners. But violent whirlwinds prevented their entrance and they were constrained to take to the sea again. Thereupon the captain-general ran up the admiral’s flag signalling a conference of the chief officers of the fleet on board his ship. It was then agreed that in the event of a separation of the ships by a tempest or other mishap each should at once make for “Wardhouse,” and the first arriving in safety should there await the coming of the rest.

That very day the dreaded separation occurred. Late in the afternoon a tempest suddenly arose which so lashed the sea that the ships were tossed hither and thither from their intended course. Above the storm on the “Edward Bonaventure” was heard the loud voice of Sir Hugh calling to Captain Chancellor to keep by the admiral. But the “Esperanza,” bearing all sails, sped onward with such swiftness that despite all of Chancellor’s efforts to follow, she was soon out of his sight. That was the last seen of her or of Sir Hugh and his companions. Nor was the “Confidentia” again seen by the men of the “Bonaventure.” Both ships and their companies had passed forever from their sight; and the miserable fate of their mates was not known when they had completed their voyage and returned to England.

The story was finally told in Willoughby’s journal, which was found a year or more afterward with the ships and the frozen bodies of the luckless Sir Hugh and his companions, seventy in all, at Lapland. Hakluyt gives it under this caption:

“The Voyage of Sir Hugh Willoughbie knight, wherein he unfortunately perished at Arzina Reca in Lapland, Anno 1553.” It is entitled: “The true copie of a Note found written in one of the two ships, to wit, the Speranza, which wintred in Lappia where Sir Willoughbie and all his companie died, being frozen to death Anno 1553.”

This journal comprised a record of the expedition from the start to Willoughby’s occupation of the Lapland haven. It opened with a statement of the object of the voyage and its institution by Cabot and the London Merchant Adventurers; a list of the ships and their burden, together with the names of their companies; and the text of the oath administered to the ships’ masters. Then followed the log of the voyage, beginning with the departure from Ratcliffe. From this it appears that the morning after the storm which had parted the ships, the “Esperanza,” with the lifting of a fog, espied the “Confidentia,” and thereafter these two ships managed to keep together. Seeing nothing of the “Bonaventure” they started in company to reach the rendezvous at “Wardhouse.” But it was not long before they lost their way. Through August and into September they sailed and drifted in various directions, northeast, south-southeast, northwest by west, west-southwest, north by east. On the fourteenth of August they discovered land in seventy-two degrees (which Hakluyt terms “Willoughbyie’s Land”), but could not reach it because of shoal water and much ice. At length, in the middle of September, they came upon land, rocky, high, and forbidding, apparently uninhabited; and so to the desolate Lapland haven which ultimately became their grave. Herein were found “very many seale fishes and other great fishes,” and upon the main were seen “beares, great deere, foxes, with divers strange beasts as guloines [or ellons, Hakluyt notes], and such other which were to us unknowen and also wonderful.” Then the sad record closes:

“Thus remaining in this haven the space of a weeke, seeing the yeere farre spent, & also very evill wether, as frost, snow, and haile, as though it had been the deepe of winter, we thought best to winter there. Wherefore we sent out three men South-southwest, to search if they would find people, who went three dayes journey, but could finde none; after that, we sent other three Westward foure daies journey, which also returned without finding any people. Then sent we three men Southeast three dayes journey, who in like sorte returned without finding of people, or any similitude of habitation.”

The will of Sir Hugh was also found with his journal, from which it appeared that he and most of his company were alive so late as January. Their haven lay near to Kegor in Norwegian Lapland and was afterward known as Arzina. They were first discovered, entombed in their ships, by Russian fishermen cruising in their haven, the following summer. Willoughby’s frozen body lay in his cabin. The next season, the summer of 1555, the two ships were recovered, with much of their goods, and restored for more service.

Their subsequent fate is to be related farther on. Our present concern is with Richard Chancellor and the “Edward Bonaventure” after the dispersion of the fleet.

“Pensive, heavie, and sorrowfull” at the disappearance of his fellows, Chancellor shaped his course for “Wardhouse,” according to the agreement, and in due time safely arrived there. When a week had passed with no sign of the other ships, he determined to proceed alone in the purposed voyage, in which decision all of his company acquiesced. Now follows the story of “The Voyage of Richard Chanceller Pilote major, the first discoverer by sea of the Kingdom of Muscovia, Anno 1553,” told in two documents reproduced by Hakluyt—Chancellor’s “rehearsal” of his adventures with an account of the wealth and barbaric splendour in the dominions of the “mighty Emperour of Russia and the Duke of Moscovia,” and Clement Adams’s narrative of the voyage as he received it “from the mouth of the said Richard Chanceler.”

First of the voyage.

Sailing from Vardohuus, “Master Chanceler held on his course towards that unknowen part of the world,” and came “at last to the place where hee found no night at all, but a continuall light and brightnesse of the Sunne shining clearley upon the huge and mightie Sea. And having the benefite of this perpetuall light for certaine dayes, at the length it pleased God to bring them into a certaine great Bay, which was of one hundredth miles or thereabout over.” Thus they had entered the White Sea and had reached the Bay of Saint Nicholas, in the neighbourhood of the modern Archangel. Here, “somewhat farre within,” they cast anchor and gazed about them. Presently in the distance a fisher boat was espied. Thereupon Chancellor with a few of his men took the pinnace and went out to meet it, hoping to learn of its crew what country they had come to, and what manner of people. But the fishermen were so amazed at the “strange greatnesse” of the “Bonaventure,” the like of which had never before been seen in those waters, that they incontinently fled as the strangers approached. Soon, however, they were overtaken. Then followed this scene in which Chancellor’s cleverness was exhibited, and also, perhaps, his remembrance of that item in Cabot’s book of ordinances as to the handling of new peoples discovered.

“Being come to them they (being in great feare as men half dead) prostrated themselves before him, offering to kisse his feete; but he (according to his great and singular courtesie) looked pleasantly upon them, comforting them by signes and gestures, refusing those dueties and reverences of theirs, and taking them up in all loving sort from the ground.”

Their confidence thus won they spread the report on shore of the arrival of a “strange nation of a singular gentlenesse and courtesie”; and soon the common people came forward with hospitable offerings. They would also traffic with their “new-come ghests” (guests) had they not been bound by a “certaine religious use and custome not to buy any forreine [foreign] commodities without the knowledge and consent of their king.” By this time the Englishmen had learned that the country was called Russia, or Muscovy, and that “Ivan Vasiliwich (which was at that time their King’s name) ruled and governed farre and wide in those places.” This was Ivan the fourth, “the Terrible.”

To the queries of the “barbarous Russes” about themselves Chancellor managed to make it understood that they were Englishmen sent by the king of England, and bearing a letter from him to their king, seeking only his “amitie and friendship and traffique with his people whereby the subjects of both kingdoms would profit.” But his court was many miles distant, so there must be delay. Chancellor asked them to sell him provisions and other necessities. Hostages were also demanded for the “more assurance” of the safety of himself and company. The governor and chief men promised that they would do what they lawfully could to “pleasure him” till they had learned their king’s will. While this palavering was going on a sledsman had been secretly despatched as a messenger to the emperor at Moscow, informing him of the new arrivals and asking his pleasure concerning them. After a considerable wait Chancellor became impatient, and thinking it was their intention to delude him, he threatened to depart and continue his voyage unless their promises were immediately fulfilled. Such was far from their desire, for they coveted the wares that the Englishmen had displayed before them. Accordingly, although their messenger had not returned, they agreed without further delay to furnish what the company wanted and to conduct them by land to the presence of their king.

Then began a long overland journey by Chancellor and his principal men to Moscow on sleds. When the greater part had been passed the “Russes’” messenger was met. He had wandered off his way seeking the English ship in a wrong direction. He delivered to Chancellor a letter from the emperor, “written in all courtesie and in the most loving manner,” inviting the Englishmen to his court and offering them post horses for the journey free of cost. Instantly their conductors overwhelmed them with kindnesses. So anxious now were the “Russes” to show their favours that they “began to quarrell, yea, and to fight also in striving and contending which of them should put their post horses to the sledde.” So after “much adoe and great paines taken in this long and wearie journey (for they had travailed very neere fifteene hundred miles), Master Chanceler came at last to Mosco the chiefe citie of the kingdome, and the seate of the king.”

Now of Chancellor’s reception by Ivan and the glitter of his court.

The opening scene which dazzled the eyes of the Englishmen, when summoned to present King Edward’s letter, is pictured by Clement Adams: “Being entred within the gates of the Court there sate a very honourable companie of Courtiers to the number of one hundred, all apparelled in cloth of golde downe to their ankles: and therehence being conducted into the chamber of the presence our men beganne to wonder at the Majestie of the Emperour: his seate was aloft, in a very royall throne, having on his head a Diademe, or Crowne of golde, apparelled with a robe all of Goldsmiths worke, and in his hande hee held a Scepter garnished and beset with precious stones ...: on the one side of him stood his chiefe Secretarie, on the other side the great Commander of Silence, both of them arayed also in cloth of golde: and then there sate the Counsel of one hundred and fiftie in number, all in like sort arayed and of great state.”