Richard Hakluyt

Eyton, England, 1552 - 1616, London

Biographyhttp://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50023480
http://data.bnf.fr/12157771/richard_hakluyt/
Historien et géographe. - Étudie à l'école de Westminster puis à l'université d'Oxford. - Diplôme de professeur d'histoire navale. - Introduit dans les écoles l'usage des globes, sphères, instruments de géographie. - Chapelain d'ambassade à Paris (1584). - Prébende à Westminster et rectorat de Wetheringset, Suffolk (1605)

Hakluyt, Richard (1552?–1616), geographer, was one of six children of Richard Hakluyt, of London, member of the Skinners' Company, and his wife, Margery. The Hakluyts were an old Herefordshire family, which in Tudor times believed its name and ancient roots were Welsh in origin. Hakluyt's father died in 1557, his mother soon after, and Hakluyt came under the care of his cousin and namesake, Richard Hakluyt the lawyer (d. 1591). Hakluyt was educated at Westminster School (queen's scholar, 1564) and Christ Church, Oxford (BA, 1574; MA, 1577). Ordained priest by late 1580, he was a student (that is, fellow) of Christ Church until 1586, when he obtained a prebend at Bristol Cathedral. From 1583 to 1588 he was chaplain to Sir Edward Stafford, English ambassador in Paris, and from 1590 until 1616 was rector of Wetheringsett and Brockford, Suffolk, a living in the gift of Stafford's wife, Lady Sheffield. In 1602 he was made a prebendary of Westminster Abbey. Hakluyt married, first, Douglas Cavendish, who died in 1597 and with whom he had a son, Edmond, born in 1593; and, second, in 1604, Frances Smith. Hakluyt was buried in Westminster Abbey on 26 November 1616.

Hakluyt is notable as an editor, translator, and encourager of geographical literature and was associated in various ways with the publication of over twenty-five travel books. His single most important work is 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, a massive collection of voyages, many printed for the first time, ranging from the fourth century to the recent exploits of Elizabethan seamen such as Drake and Cavendish. This appeared in two editions, the first in 1589, the second, much expanded, in three volumes, 1598–1600.

Hakluyt's interest in geography was aroused as a boy when his cousin, the lawyer, who was closely connected with overseas trading circles, responded to his curiosity about ‘certeine bookes of cosmographie, with an universall mappe’ on his table. Pointing to the ‘seas ... empires ... and territories’ on the map, he spoke of ‘their speciall commodities, & particular wants, which by the benefit of traffike, & entercourse of merchants, are plentifully supplied’, and then directed the young Hakluyt to a Bible and Psalm 107:

where I read, that they which go downe to the sea in ships, and occupy by the great waters, they see the works of the Lord, and his woonders in the deepe, &c. Which words of the Prophet together with my cousins discourse (things of high and rare delight to my yong nature) tooke in me so deepe an impression, that I constantly resolved, if ever I were preferred to the University ... I would by Gods assistance prosecute that knowledge and kinde of literature.

Hakluyt kept this resolution, reading at Oxford ‘whatsoever printed or written discoveries and voyages’ he found extant ‘in Greeke, Latine, Italian, Spanish, Portugall, French, or English’ (Taylor, 2.396–7).

At Oxford, and until 1586, Hakluyt received awards from the Clothworkers' Company, whose sometime master, Richard Staper, provided material on the Turkey trade for the Principal Navigations. He became known to Sir Francis Walsingham (secretary of state and an associate of Hakluyt the lawyer), Sir Francis Drake, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Walter Ralegh, and others active in promoting overseas ventures. In 1584 Hakluyt presented the queen with his ‘Discourse of western planting’, elaborating ambitious colonial projects in North America and written at Ralegh's direction. It is untypical of Hakluyt's work in general, being an extended piece of his own prose and designed for manuscript circulation only, to express the interests of a particular group at court. Much discussed by modern commentators as a pre-eminent Elizabethan colonial tract, the ‘Discourse’ had no discernible political impact in Hakluyt's time.

The earliest book associated with Hakluyt is John Florio's translation of Jacques Cartier's Shorte ... Narration of French discoveries in America, published with Hakluyt's assistance in 1580. Hakluyt's own first book, Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America, containing useful information for prospective colonization projects, appeared in 1582, coinciding with Gilbert's drive for investors in his North American ventures. It was dedicated to Hakluyt's Christ Church contemporary, Philip Sidney, who remarked to Stafford that he ‘was haulf perswaded to enter into the journey of Sir Humphry Gilbert very eagerli; whereunto your Mr Hackluit hath served for a very good trumpet’ (Payne, 5). Sidney's friend, the poet–courtier, Edward Dyer, was to be exceptionally important to Hakluyt in encouraging the Principal Navigations.

Although Hakluyt contemplated following Gilbert to America, his only travel abroad was to the embassy in Paris. There he met the French royal cosmographer, André Thevet, who lent him René Goulaine de Laudonnière's manuscript L'Histoire notable de la Floride, printed in 1586 at Hakluyt's expense and in 1587 in an English translation by Hakluyt. He learned much from Dom Antonio, the exiled claimant to the Portuguese throne. Hakluyt's greatest editorial achievement during these years was his new edition (in the original Latin) of De orbe novo ... decades octo (1587) by Peter Martyr (Pietro Martire d'Anghiera), used subsequently by Michael Lok in making the first complete English translation, De Novo Orbe, or the Historie of the West Indies (1612). Hakluyt dedicated his Peter Martyr to Ralegh, and it was through Hakluyt's intercession that Theodor de Bry published Thomas Harriot's Briefe ... Report of Ralegh's Virginia colony with illustrations by Ralegh's draughtsman, John White, in 1590.

Hakluyt owed much to Walsingham's support and probably gathered intelligence for him in Paris; the first edition of the Principal Navigations was both dedicated to and licensed for publication by him. After Walsingham's death (1590), the patronage of Sir Robert Cecil (secretary of state 1596–1608) was increasingly important to Hakluyt, especially in obtaining ecclesiastical preferment. Volume one of the second edition of the Principal Navigations was dedicated to the lord admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham, but the other two were dedicated to Cecil: ‘I cannot but acknowledge my selfe much indebted for your favourable letters heretofore written in my behalfe in mine honest causes’ (Taylor, 2.462–3). Referring to the demands of ‘my profession of divinitie, the care of my family’ (ibid., 2.474), Hakluyt also acknowledged the scholarly assistance of his friend, John Pory, whose English edition of Leo Africanus's Geographical Historie of Africa appeared with Hakluyt's commendation in 1600; it was dedicated to Cecil, as was Hakluyt's translation of Antonio Galvão's Discoveries of the World (1601).

In the early years of the seventeenth century Hakluyt advised the East India Company and invested in the Virginia Company, interests reflected in The Journall ... of Jacob Corneliszen Neck (1601), translated at Hakluyt's persuasion to assist East Indian voyagers, and Virginia Richly Valued (1609), translated by Hakluyt and dedicated to the Virginia Company. In 1606 he received, but did not take up, a dispensation to go to Virginia without surrendering his ecclesiastical appointments in England.

Hakluyt is sometimes seen as an imperial propagandist, but among his motives simple patriotic pride and a desire to add to geographical knowledge need not be discounted. Referring to the projected Principal Navigations in 1587, Hakluyt hailed the fortune of the Spanish in having Peter Martyr as chronicler of their deeds overseas and pointed to the need:

to collect in orderly fashion the maritime records of our own countrymen, now lying scattered and neglected, and ... bring them to the light of day in a worthy guise, to the end that posterity ... may at last be inspired to seize the opportunity offered to them of playing a worthy part. (Taylor, 2.369)

In the first edition of the Principal Navigations he stresses its use of firsthand reports:

I have referred every voyage to his author: for I am not ignorant of Ptolemies assertion, that Peregrinationis historia [the history of travel], and not those wearie volumes bearing the titles of universall cosmographie ... most untruly and unprofitablie ramassed and hurled together, is that which must bring us to the certayne and full discoverie of the world.

He includes ‘the navigations onely of our owne nation’ and excludes voyages ‘neere home’ or ‘neither of search and discoverie of strange coasts, the chiefe subject of this my labour’ (Taylor, 2.402–3). (The second edition relaxed these criteria to include naval actions such as the defeat of the Armada.) In its concern to discover an English past the Principal Navigations may be associated with the work of William Camden and other antiquarians, although his book's English focus should not distract from Hakluyt's many continental European contacts and intellectual debts. Several hundred copies survive today, suggesting that it was printed in relatively large numbers; contemporary references and provenances indicate a wide circulation, at least among élites.

Hakluyt's successor was Samuel Purchas, whose Hakluytus Posthumus, or, Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625) is much indebted to Hakluyt's papers, obtained by Purchas some time after 1616. The Principal Navigations continues to be an invaluable source for narratives not otherwise preserved, while Hakluyt's achievement as an editor is commemorated by the Hakluyt Society, founded and named after him in 1846 to publish historic voyages and geographical texts.

Anthony Payne
Sources

D. B. Quinn, ed., The Hakluyt handbook, 2 vols., Hakluyt Society (1974) · G. B. Parks, Richard Hakluyt and the English voyages, 2nd edn (1961) · A. Payne, ‘“Strange, remote and farre distant countreys”: the travel books of Richard Hakluyt’, Journeys through the market: travel, travellers and the book trade, ed. R. Myers and M. Harris (1999), 1–37 · E. G. R. Taylor, ed., The original writings and correspondence of the two Richard Hakluyts, 2 vols. (1935) · P. A. Neville-Sington and A. Payne, ‘An interim census of surviving copies of Hakluyt's Divers voyages and Principal navigations’, in A. Payne, Richard Hakluyt and his books, Hakluyt Society (1997), 25–76 · R. Helgerson, ‘The voyages of a nation’, Forms of nationhood: the Elizabethan writing of England (1992), 149–91 · G. D. Ramsay, ‘Clothworkers, Merchants Adventurers and Richard Hakluyt’, EngHR, 92 (1977), 504–21 · E. Lynam, ed., Richard Hakluyt and his successors, Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., 93 (1946) · J. Parker, Books to build an empire: a bibliographical history of English overseas interests to 1620 (1965) · R. C. Bridges and P. E. H. Hair, eds., Compassing the vaste globe of the earth: studies in the history of the Hakluyt Society, 1846–1996, Hakluyt Society, 183 (1996) · HoP, Commons, 1509–58, 2.273–4
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Anthony Payne, ‘Hakluyt, Richard (1552?–1616)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2006 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/11892, accessed 19 Oct 2017]

Richard Hakluyt (1552?–1616): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11892

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