ENTRY

Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616)

SUMMARY

Richard Hakluyt, better known as Richard Hakluyt (the younger) or Richard Hakluyt (the minister) to distinguish him from his elder cousin of the same name, was an editor, geographer, and Anglican minister. With his cousin, he acted as one of the chief propagandists of English colonization in North America. In 1582, he published Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America, and the Ilands Adjacent, probably in support of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s plan to settle North America. And when Gilbert’s half brother Walter Raleigh inherited Gilbert’s patent for colonization, Hakluyt wrote and presented to Queen Elizabeth a Discourse on Western Planting (1584), forcefully arguing for colonization predicated on Protestant proselytizing and economic expansion, both of which, he insisted, would help undermine Spain. Five years later he published Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, a remarkable collection of documents whose final section focused on English activities in the Americas. Hakluyt also played a key role in producing a book that brought England’s first American colony to the attention of a wide and lasting audience: the first volume of Flemish engraver Theodor de Bry‘s multilingual America series, an edition of Thomas Hariot‘s narrative with John White‘s images and maps of the settlement at Roanoke Island. In later years, Hakluyt advised the East India Company; his was one of eight names on the original charter of the Virginia Company of London and he was listed as an investor in the second charter. An official for many years at Westminster Abbey, he died in 1616.

Early Life and Education

Hakluyt was born in 1552, the son of Richard Hakluyt, a member of the London Skinners Company. He had two brothers, Oliver and Edmund. After his father’s death in 1557, Hakluyt and his surviving family were commended to the care of his cousin Richard Hakluyt (the elder) of the Middle Temple, a lawyer then probably in his twenties. Hakluyt credits his cousin with inspiring in him a passion for geography while he was still a boy at the Westminster School; he also adopted many of the lawyer’s associations and interests, particularly in connection with northern exploration and support for England’s cloth trade.

By January 1571, Hakluyt had enrolled at Christ Church, Oxford, as a Queen’s Scholar; he received an additional scholarship from the Skinners Company. After earning a bachelor of arts degree in March 1574 and a master of arts degree in May 1577, he stayed on to lecture on geography, in his words, “to the singular pleasure, and general contentment of my auditory.” Hakluyt’s further studies in divinity were supported by the Clothworkers Company, and he is recorded as preaching a sermon to members in 1581; he had probably been ordained by 1580. Also in 1580, while still at Oxford, he paid the Italian linguist John Florio to translate from Italian into English two accounts by Jacques Cartier, who had explored the Saint Lawrence River and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and claimed Canada for France. Although the preface proclaiming “the infinite treasures” of the Americas was signed by Florio, Hakluyt likely wrote it himself.

Two years later, in 1582, Hakluyt published under his own name a small collection of miscellaneous materials on northern America, Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America, and the Ilands Adjacent. Included in the collection were notes prepared by Hakluyt’s cousin the lawyer for Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who in 1578 had been granted by Queen Elizabeth the six-year right to explore and plant colonies in North America. Divers Voyages seems to have been intended to promote Gilbert’s 1583 voyage to “Norumbega,” a large and loosely defined swath of America’s northeastern coast. According to Hakluyt’s friend, the Hungarian scholar Stephen Parmenius, Hakluyt intended to follow Gilbert on a later ship. He didn’t, however, and Parmenius and Gilbert both drowned in September 1583 when their ship, the Squirrel, sank off Sable Island, south of Newfoundland.

Paris and Roanoke

In September 1583, Hakluyt left Oxford for a position as chaplain and secretary to the English ambassador in Paris, Sir Edward Stafford. Over the next five years, while making frequent trips back to England, Hakluyt collected information about the Americas and worked on new editions and translations of existing writings on the subject. His correspondence with Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen’s secretary of state, indicates that Hakluyt’s activities served the interests of the state by keeping the queen’s advisers informed about various colonial adventures; indeed, Hakluyt’s information gathering was undertaken, in part, at Walsingham’s request. Always a passionate advocate for exploration and colonization, Hakluyt insisted, in a letter to Walsingham on January 7, 1584, that the English lay their claim to the American coast immediately, before the opportunity could “waxe colde and fall to the ground.”

Among the works Hakluyt saw through the press in Paris, several are dedicated to Walter Raleigh, a close adviser to the queen, who inherited Gilbert’s royal patent. (Raleigh and Gilbert were half brothers.) At Durham House on the Thames River, Raleigh gathered experts on navigation, geography, and the Americas in general, and it is clear that Hakluyt joined Thomas Hariot and John Dee among others in planning a western colony. In January 1584, four months before Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe set sail on an initial scouting mission that landed in the Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina, Hakluyt wrote Walsingham: “Your honour made a motion heretofore unto me, whether I could be contented to goe myself into the action. I am most willinge to goe now.” But for reasons unknown, he was absent from this trip as he had been from Gilbert’s ill-fated mission.

Later in the year, after the return of Amadas and Barlowe, Hakluyt presented Queen Elizabeth and her advisers with his Discourse on Western Planting, a sustained and forceful argument for investment in colonization of the Americas. Originally intended as confidential counsel, the Discourse was not published until the nineteenth century; nevertheless, in addition to Hakluyt’s own research, it drew on some information already widely available. In twenty-one chapters, Hakluyt argued that colonization would be an ideal opportunity for the English to spread the Protestant faith to Indians and lift “the soules of millions of those wretched people … from darkenes to lighte, from falshoodde to truthe, from dombe Idolls to the lyvinge god, from the depe pitt of hell to the highest heavens.” He focused primarily, however, on opportunities for the English to exploit the natural resources of the Americas and perhaps reap the kinds of rewards the Spanish had claimed in the West Indies. While happily dispatching to the new colony the underachievers of England’s expanding population, England also would create a needed market for its own goods. Finally, Hakluyt argued that the Spanish in America were weak—their colonies undermanned and spread too far apart—and that allying with the Indians might be enough to destroy their empire.

Hakluyt’s case was powerful and passionate, and his expertise on the Americas would be sought by Elizabeth’s ministers in the years that followed. In 1584, however, the queen was not persuaded to provide state support for Raleigh’s enterprise. She granted him permission to plant a colony (by this time called Virginia) at Roanoke Island in 1585 and then, in 1587, near the Chesapeake Bay, but relied on Raleigh and his investors to pay for it themselves. (The 1587 expedition, intended for the Chesapeake, landed instead at Roanoke Island and became the fabled “Lost Colony.”) In 1589, Hakluyt was named among the “merchants of London, and adventurers to Virginia” to whom Raleigh granted trade privileges—should the colony come off—in the regions under his patent and particularly in “the cittie of Raleigh” intended to be built on the Chesapeake Bay. The document suggests that Hakluyt may have invested or been willing to invest in another voyage to Roanoke, but by 1591 the colony was extinct.

Perhaps the most important tangible outcome of the Roanoke settlements was a publication, in 1588, of A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia by Thomas Hariot, a mathematician and one of Raleigh’s Durham House advisers who had been among the colonists in 1585–1586. Hakluyt was responsible for bringing Hariot’s account, and the related watercolor paintings of Roanoke by John White, to the attention of the Flemish engraver and printer Theodor de Bry. Hakluyt encouraged de Bry to make what originally was a slim pamphlet into the multilingual folio volume, accompanied by de Bry’s engravings of White’s illustrations, that appeared as the first volume of de Bry’s America series in 1590. (Hakluyt also translated the illustration captions from Latin into English.) De Bry’s edition of A briefe and true report was the product of a remarkable collaboration between Hariot, White, Hakluyt, de Bry, and a number of others, including the famous botanist Charles de l’Écluse; it made the English colony famous. The illustrations quickly became iconic images of Native Americans, and Captain John Smith borrowed from them to illustrate his Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624).

In the meantime, about 1587, Hakluyt married Douglas Cavendish, likely a cousin of the English explorer Sir Thomas Cavendish, who circumnavigated the globe from 1586 until 1588. The couple had one child, Edmond, who was born in 1593. Douglas Cavendish Hakluyt died in 1597, and on March 30, 1604, Richard Hakluyt married a widow named Frances Smithe. In 1590, Hakluyt was named rector of Wetheringsett, in Suffolk, a small rural parish about ninety miles from London. In 1602, he became a prebendary, or administrator, of Westminster Abbey; in 1603 he was named archdeacon, and in 1608 steward of Westminster.

Principal Navigations

Hakluyt wrote that during his time in France, he 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 … continuall neglect of the like attempts … either ignominiously reported, or exceedingly condemned.” This experience led him to undertake a new documentary collection on an altogether grander scale than the 1582 pamphlet. In 1589, the year after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the 825 folio pages of Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation both made the case for the past achievements of his countrymen and urged them to consider what more they might do with the information thus provided. A second edition, whose three volumes appeared successively in 1598, 1599, and 1600, brought the record of voyages up to date and expanded the coverage of both medieval material and recent incidents in the sea war with Spain. This new edition spelled its title Principal Navigations and, despite its greater length, had little to add about the mid-Atlantic aside from John White’s report of his final voyage to Roanoke in 1590. This absence reflects a lack of English activity in the region rather than a failure of interest on Hakluyt’s part; he continued to collect documentary evidence as it was produced, and would be one of the prime movers in securing a charter for the first Virginia company.

The two editions of Principal Navigations make apparent the real scope of Hakluyt’s interests and relationships. No longer relying mainly on previously published materials, as he had done in Divers Voyages and the editions published during his years at Oxford and in Paris, he drew on state and company archives as well as on personal connections for manuscript and oral accounts, information that never would have been available without his work. The rich and diverse set of documents printed in the second edition ranged from lists of weights and prices used for trade at Ormuz and statutes regulating English trade with the Hanseatic League, to accounts of missions to the Mongols, voyages up the coast of Greenland, and the circumnavigations of Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish. Both editions of the collection reprinted Hariot’s Briefe and true report, along with letters, journals, and other manuscript material relating to the Roanoke colony, some of it written up by participants at Hakluyt’s request or his cousin’s.

Virginia and East India

The breadth of knowledge demonstrated by the two editions of Principal Navigations made Hakluyt a useful advisor to the East India Company (founded in 1600) as he had been earlier to the Muscovy Company (chartered in 1555 to trade in Russia) and the group interested in the Roanoke colony. Hakluyt appeared at a meeting of the directors of the East India Company on January 29, 1601, and the notes describe him as a “historiographer of the viages of the East Indies.” Copies of Principal Navigations were supplied to the company’s ships. He also continued his practical involvement with the exploration and colonization of North America. On April 10, 1606, Hakluyt’s name appeared as one of the original eight petitioners on the charter granted by King James I to the Virginia Company of London. Later that year, he received a dispensation to travel to Jamestown without surrendering his ecclesiastical positions (by then, quite numerous), but in the end, again for reasons unknown, he did not go. On May 23, 1609, his name appears, as an investor, on the Virginia Company of London’s second charter. After Hakluyt’s death, his two shares passed to his son. (Edmond Hakluyt sold the shares in 1621.)

Following the appearance of Principal Navigations, Hakluyt continued to collect information about the world outside of Europe, and occasionally to publish materials he thought would be helpful to English commercial and colonial undertakings. In 1609, he dedicated to the Virginia Company of London his translation of Virginia Richly Valued, by the Description of the Maine Land of Florida, Her Next Neighbor, a narrative of the explorations of the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto. In it, he made the unsettling suggestion that, “if gentle polishing will not serve,” then “hammerours and rough masons” (i.e., soldiers) would be necessary to prepare Virginia Indians for conversion by English ministers.

In July 1616, the English explorer William Baffin, in search of the Northwest Passage, named for Hakluyt “Hakluits Ile,” an island at 78 degrees north latitude. Four months later, on November 23, 1616, Hakluyt died; he was buried three days later in Westminster Abbey. Most of the materials Hakluyt had collected after 1600 were left unpublished until 1625, when the Reverend Samuel Purchas printed Hakluytus Posthumus, or, Purchas His Pilgrimes. Materials on Jamestown originally collected by Hakluyt and later published by Purchas included the narratives of William Strachey and George Percy, as well as letters by Gabriel Archer and Samuel Argall. John Smith drew on Hakluyt’s collections extensively to supplement his own narrative in the Generall Historie; as was common at the time, he often did so without acknowledgment, but he cites Hakluyt in his text as the basic reference for a history of English exploration before 1600.

Major Works

  • Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America, and the Ilands Adjacent (1582)
  • Discourse on Western Planting (1584)
  • Principall Navigations of the English Nation (1589)
  • The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or Over-land, to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth, at Any Time within the Compasse of These 1500 Yeeres, 3 vols. (1598–1600)
  • The Discoveries of the World from Their First Original unto the Year of Our Lord 1555, English translation of work by António Galvão (1601)
  • Mare Liberum (The Free Sea), English translation of work by Hugo Grotius (ca. 1609)
  • Virginia Richly Valued, by the Description of the Maine Land of Florida, Her Next Neighbor, English translation (1609)

MAP
TIMELINE
1552
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) is born in London to Richard Hakluyt, a member of the Skinners Company.
1557
Richard Hakluyt (the elder) is named as "overseer" in the will of his uncle, Richard Hakluyt, and likely becomes the guardian of his younger cousins, including Richard Hakluyt (the younger).
1568
While a student at Westminster School, Richard Hakluyt (the younger) visits his elder cousin of the same name at his Middle Temple residence. He finds the chambers full of maps and globes, likely the beginning of his lifelong interest in geography and colonization.
January 8, 1571
By this date, Richard Hakluyt (the younger) is in residence at Christ Church, Oxford, as a Queen's Scholar from Westminster School.
March 1574
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) earns his bachelor of arts degree at Christ Church, Oxford.
May 1577
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) earns his master of arts degree at Christ Church, Oxford.
1577—1581
After earning his MA degree, Richard Hakluyt (the younger) remains at Christ Church, Oxford, giving lectures on geography and pursuing further studies of religion.
1580
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) pays the Italian linguist John Florio to translate two accounts by the explorer Jacques Cartier, who had claimed Canada for France, from Italian into English. Although it was signed by Florio, Hakluyt likely wrote the preface, proclaiming "the infinite treasures" of the Americas.
1580
By year's end, Richard Hakluyt (the younger) has been ordained an Anglican minister.
1582
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) publishes Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America, and the Ilands Adjacent, a short collection of maps, travel accounts, and general information aimed at promoting English claims to America.
1583—1588
While serving the English ambassador in Paris, Richard Hakluyt (the younger) gathers information about the Americas from published books, archival materials, and printed sources.
April 1583
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) likely helps Christopher Carleill prepare the pamphlet A Discourse upon the Entended Voyage to the Hethermoste Partes of America, an argument for western exploration and colonization that closely echoes Hakluyt's own writing.
September 20, 1583
Around this date, Richard Hakluyt (the younger) leaves London for Paris. He has been appointed to serve as chaplain to Sir Edward Stafford, the English ambassador to France.
1584
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) presents a treatise on colonization, the Discourse on Western Planting, to Queen Elizabeth. He is awarded the next open appointment as prebendary of Bristol Cathedral, which he will take up in 1586.
January 1584
In a letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, Richard Hakluyt (the younger) expresses his readiness to join the impending expedition to America organized by Walter Raleigh. For reasons unknown, he does not go.
1587—1590
After meeting the Flemish engraver Theodor de Bry in London, Richard Hakluyt (the younger) assists him in assembling an illustrated, multilingual edition of Thomas Hariot's account of the Roanoke colony, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, published in 1590.
ca. 1587
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) marries Douglas Cavendish, likely a cousin of the English explorer Thomas Cavendish.
October 1589
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) publishes the first edition of Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, a collection of documents recording travel beyond Europe by Englishmen and others.
April 6, 1590
Sir Francis Walsingham, secretary to Queen Elizabeth I and patron to Richard Hakluyt (the younger), dies.
April 20, 1590
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) is instituted rector of Wetheringsett, in Suffolk, a small rural parish about ninety miles from London.
March 4, 1591
The will of Richard Hakluyt (the elder) is proved and specifies no wife, children, or burial place. He leaves the bulk of his estate to his cousins.
June 3, 1593
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) and his wife, Douglas, christen their son, Edmond, at the church in Wetheringsett, in Suffolk, where Hakluyt is rector.
August 8, 1597
Douglas Cavendish Hakluyt, wife of Richard Hakluyt (the younger) and likely a cousin or niece of the English explorer Thomas Cavendish, is buried at the church in Wetheringsett, in Suffolk, where her husband is rector.
October 7, 1598
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) finishes the first volume of a new edition of his major publication, now called The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or Over-land, to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth, at Any Time within the Compasse of These 1500 Yeeres.
October 16, 1599
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) appears at a meeting of the directors of the East India Company, likely as an adviser.
October 24, 1599
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) finishes the second volume of a new edition of his major publication, now called The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or Over-land, to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth, at Any Time within the Compasse of These 1500 Yeeres.
September 1, 1600
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) finishes the third volume of a new edition of his major publication, now called The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or Over-land, to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth, at Any Time within the Compasse of These 1500 Yeeres.
January 29, 1601
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) appears at a meeting of the directors of the East India Company. Described as a "historiographer of the viages of the East Indies," he lectures on the best places for the English to trade.
May 1602
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) is installed as a prebendary of Westminster Abbey.
1603
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) persuades merchants in Bristol to fund Martin Pring's voyage to "North Virginia" (New England), still under Sir Walter Raleigh's royal patent, and obtains a release from Raleigh.
December 3, 1603
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) is appointed archdeacon of Westminster Abbey, a position he holds until 1605.
March 30, 1604
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) marries his second wife, a widow named Frances Smithe.
April 10, 1606
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) is named as one of the original eight petitioners when King James I grants the Virginia Company of London a royal charter to settle in North America. He receives a dispensation to join the expedition but does not go.
September 1608
Late in the month, Richard Hakluyt (the younger) becomes steward of Westminster Abbey.
ca. 1609
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) publishes an English translation of Mare Liberum (The Free Sea) by the Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius. The book, originally published in Latin in 1608, attempts to legally justify the freedom of commerce on the high seas.
Spring 1609
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) dedicates to the Virginia Company of London his translation of Virginia Richly Valued, by the Description of the Maine Land of Florida, Her Next Neighbor, a narrative of the explorations of the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto.
May 23, 1609
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) is named as an investor on the second royal charter granted by the Crown to the Virginia Company of London.
1610
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) publishes a new English translation (and partial reconstruction) of The Discoveries of the World from Their First Original unto the Year of Our Lord 1555 by the Portuguese writer and administrator António Galvão.
August 20, 1612
Richard Hakluyt (the younger), while living at Wetheringsett, writes his will, leaving the bulk of his estate to his son, Edmond.
1614
An English translation of Dialogues in the English and Malaiane Languages, originally published in Latin by the Dutchman Gothard Arthus, is attributed to Augustine Spalding but likely is the work of Richard Hakluyt (the younger).
July 1616
The English explorer William Baffin, in search of the Northwest Passage, names Hakluits Ile, an island at 78 degrees north latitude, after Richard Hakluyt (the younger).
November 23, 1616
Richard Hakluyt (the younger) dies and is buried three days later in Westminster Abbey.
June 13, 1621
Edmond Hakluyt, son of Richard Hakluyt (the younger), sells his two inherited shares in the Virginia Company of London, ending his family's long association with the enterprise.
1625
Samuel Purchas publishes Hakluytus Posthumus, or, Purchas His Pilgrimes, including materials collected by Richard Hakluyt (the younger) after the appearance of Principal Navigations, his major work, published between 1598 and 1600. The book also includes John Smith's map Virginia: Discovered and Discribed.
FURTHER READING
  • Hakluyt, Richard. The Principall Navigations Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation. 2 vols. London: George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, 1589. Edited by David B. Quinn. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1965.
  • Hakluyt, Richard. The Principal Navigations Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation. 3 vols. London: George Bishop, Ralph Newberie, and Robert Barker, 1598–1600. Reprint, in 12 volumes, Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1903–1905.
  • Hakluyt, Richard. A Particuler Discourse … Known as Discourse of Western Planting. Edited by David B. Quinn and Alison M. Quinn. London: Hakluyt Society, 1993.
  • Horn, James. A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
  • Mancall, Peter. Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007.
  • Payne, Anthony. Richard Hakluyt: A Guide to His Books and to Those Associated with Him, 1580–1625. London: Quaritch, 2008.
CITE THIS ENTRY
APA Citation:
Fuller, Mary & Wolfe, Brendan. Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616). (2020, December 07). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/hakluyt-richard-1552-1616.
MLA Citation:
Fuller, Mary, and Brendan Wolfe. "Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616)" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (07 Dec. 2020). Web. 29 Sep. 2023
Last updated: 2021, December 22
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