Hakluyt, Richard

(b. London, England, ca. 1552; d. London, 23 November 1616)

geography, history, advocacy of English overseas expansion.

Richard Hakluyt was the leading advocate and chronicler of English overseas expansion in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. His collections of voyages established in the English language a new kind of historical literature, which remained in vogue for over 200 years.

A member of an influential and long-established Herefordshire family—his father was a London merchant—Hakluyt was educated at Westminster School, London, and Christ Church, Oxford. His cousin Richard Hakluyt, a lawyer of the Middle Temple, introduced him as a schoolboy to maps and books on cosmography, thus firing his life-long interest in the new and rapidly developing subject of geography. At Oxford, where he held a studentship at Christ Church (1570-ca. 1588), his study of the humanities as undergraduate and bachelor of arts (1570–1577) was the prelude to a teaching career as master of arts (1577 to 1582 or 1583) in which geography was increasingly his concern. He claimed to be the first to give public lectures in “the olde imperfectly composed, and the new lately reformed Map, Globes, Spheares, and other instruments of this Art...,” and he was among those consulted by the great Flemish geographer Abraham Ortelius when the latter visited London in 1577. By the time he was ordained in 1578 he was an accepted authority on maritime affairs.

Hakluyt’s first pamphlet (MS, 1579–1580) was a memorandum recommending that England should colonize and fortify the Strait of Magellan and so command “the gate of entry into the tresure of both the East and the West Indies.” With Spain and Portugal already in possession of rich empires in America and Asia, he saw the need for England to establish her own routes to the coveted regions of the Orient, and to acquire her own sphere of influence in lands not yet annexed. Hence his special interest in, and advocacy of, the colonization of North America and the search for the Northwest Passage to Asia. In 1580, when Sir Humphrey Gilbert was projecting a colony in North America, Hakluyt commissioned John Florio to translate the narrative of Cartier’s voyages to Canada. This was the first of a series of foreign works for which Hakluyt sponsored publication in English, as propaganda for English enterprise and as intelligence about regions already discovered. His years in Paris as chaplain to the English ambassador (1583–1588) gave him valuable access to French and Spanish sources.

Hakluyt’s major and most original contribution to knowledge and literature lay in his three great collections of voyages. In the first, Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (1582), published under the initials R.H., he sought to establish England’s claim to North America on the basis of priority of discovery. This was followed in 1589 by a volume of much wider compass, The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation.... Based on such original sources as the journals of explorers, sailing directions, and reports by merchants and seamen, many received by Hakluyt in person, it was a handbook of Elizabethan exploration and discovery. In working design it owed its inspiration to Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s great work Delle navigationi et viaggi (1550–1559), As in Ramusio’s collection, the voyages were arranged regionally and systematically, and the text was a model of discreet but informative editing.

Finally came the great three-volume work, of similar title to its predecessor but much enlarged to bring the record up to date and to include foreign enterprises, The Principal navigations... of the English Nation (1598–1600), acclaimed by J. A. Froude as “the Prose Epic of the modern English nation.” In his preface and three new dedicatory epistles, Hakluyt set out his own ideas for England’s maritime destiny and affirmed his belief in geography as the “right eye” of history. He also made the practical proposal that a lecture in navigation be established in London, “for the banishing of our former grosse ignorance in Marine causes.”

Hakluyt did not restrict his activities to the role of chronicler but participated actively in projects of overseas expansion. Twice in the early 1580’s he had hopes of sailing on voyages to America, but others went instead. Hakluyt’s 1584 manuscript treatise for the queen and Francis Walsingham, “The Discourse of Western Planting,” urged the advantages of an American settlement as a national enterprise. From 1599 he acted as consultant to the East India Company. As patentee of the Virginia Company in 1606, he had plans to go to Jamestown, but these too did not materialize. When he died he had traveled no farther than Paris. Yet his work provided inspiration and a wealth of information for his own and future generations of British seamen and colonial entrepreneurs.

The Hakluyt Society, founded in London in 1846 for the publication of records of voyages and travel, carries on Hakluyt’s work and commemorates his name. Hakluyt was buried in Westminster Abbey.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Richard Hakluyt’s major works are Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (London, 1582); The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation... (London, 1589); and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation..., 3 vols. (London, 1598–1600),

Hakluyt’s later collections, edited and augmented after his death by Samuel Purchas, are in Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes (London, 1625).

II. Secondary Literature. Works on Hakluyt include G. B. Parks, Richard Hakluyt and the English Voyages (New York, 1928), revised in 1961 with a complete bibliography of Hakluyt’s writings; E. G. R. Taylor, The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts (London, 1935), Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., LXXVI-LX.XVII: Edward Lynam, ed., Richard Hakluyt & His Successors (London, 1946); The Principall Navigations..., a photolithographic facs., with an intro. by D. B. Quinn and R. A. Skelton and a new index by Alison Quinn (Cambridge, 1965); and D. B. Quinn, Richard Hakluyt, Editor. A Study Introductory to the Facsimile Edition of Richard Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages (1582) (Amsterdam, 1.967).

Helen Wallis

Richard Hakluyt

The English geographer and author Richard Hakluyt (c. 1552-1616) was one of the first practical geographers in England and an important promoter of the English colonization of North America.

The second son of Richard Hakluyt, a London skinner, Richard Hakluyt attended Westminster School. A meeting with his cousin, the geographer Richard Hakluyt (ca. 1535-1591), aroused his interest in practical geography, cosmography, and trade. Young Richard performed well at Westminster and proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1575 and a master of arts degree in 1577. He was ordained priest a few years later. Meanwhile, he avidly pursued his geographical studies and lectured on geography at Oxford. He cultivated the acquaintance of men he called "the chiefest Captains at sea, the greatest Merchants, and the best Mariners of our nation." These men included Sir Francis Drake. In 1580 he sponsored the publication of two accounts of voyages by Jacques Cartier. John Florio, who was at Oxford, translated the originals.

Hakluyt became involved with the colonialist party in England. His first significant work, Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America (1582), served as an inspiration for English expansion. It was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. In addition to accounts of English voyages, it included a list of American products and a discussion of the Northwest Passage.

Within a few months after the publication of the Voyages, Hakluyt entered government service. He helped to promote Sir Humphrey Gilbert's voyage of 1583 and then went to France, where he served as chaplain to the ambassador, Sir Edward Stafford. During his years in France (1583-1588) he collected geographical information from French, Portuguese, and Spanish sources. Meanwhile, he returned to England on various occasions. In behalf of Sir Walter Raleigh he presented the Queen with a plea for royal aid in Western planting (1584). The Queen rewarded him with a prebend at Bristol. He was in England when Raleigh's first colony sailed, when Drake brought it home again, and when Raleigh's second, or "lost, " colony sailed. In France he sponsored the publication of books concerning geography and exploration.

In 1589 Hakluyt published the first edition of his major work, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, a historical compilation of English enterprise abroad. Shortly thereafter he married. He continued to associate with those interested in the Virginia colony and in the East India Company. The second edition of the Principal Navigations, about twice as long as the first, appeared in three folio volumes between 1598 and 1600. It contained new material from all periods, including new information on the exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh. Hakluyt received a prebend at Westminster and was made chaplain of the Savoy.

Further Reading

Hakluyt's Principal Navigations was reprinted in 12 volumes by the Hakluyt Society (1903-1905). Several partial reprints have been published. There is a short biography by Foster Watson, Richard Hakluyt (1924). The standard work on Hakluyt's life and achievement is George B. Parks, Richard Hakluyt and the English Voyages (2d ed. 1961). The influence of the voyages on English literature was studied by Robert Ralston Cawley, The Voyagers and Elizabethan Drama (1938) and Unpathed Waters:Studies in the Influence of the Voyagers on Elizabethan Literature (1940). □

Hakluyt, Richard (pron. Hacklit) (c.1552–1616), English collector and editor of sea narratives, born of a Herefordshire family and educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He found an early delight in reading books of travel and when at Oxford learned five or six languages to assist him in reading books of voyages written in other languages, and to enable him to talk to seamen of other nationalities. While there, he also studied navigation and the art of chartmaking, and by reading as many of the original journals kept by mariners as he could lay his hands on he compiled a collection of voyages to America and the West Indies which was published in 1582 as Divers Voyages Touching upon the Discovery of America.

On leaving Oxford he took holy orders and in 1583 went to Paris as chaplain to the English ambassador. During the next six years he compiled the great work for which he is famous, The Principall Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, of which a first edition in one folio volume was published in 1589, and a second and enlarged edition in three folio volumes ten years later. It was one of the really great books of the English language, and one of the best loved in marine literature.

Throughout his life Hakluyt was a strong advocate for exploring the American continent and discovering the North-West Passage, and he continued to collect, read, copy, and make notes of every account of a voyage he could find, often travelling long distances to copy original sea journals or to talk with a seaman who had made a long or difficult voyage. He assembled a huge collection of manuscripts, many more than appear in his Principall Navigations, and he was working on these at the time of his death. They were acquired by a friend, a priest called Samuel Purchas (c.1575–1626), who in 1626 published some of them in five folio volumes under the title of Hakluytus Posthumous, or Purchas his Pilgrimes. Sadly Purchas was no editor and many of the accounts Hakluyt had gathered were garbled and truncated.

Among the publications of the Hakluyt Society, which was founded in Britain in 1847 to edit and publish the texts and accounts of voyages, was Hakluyt's Principall Navigations in twelve volumes and Purchas's Pilgrimes in twenty volumes.

Bridges, R., and Hair, P. (eds.), Compassing the Globe: Studies in the History of the Hakluyt Society (1996).

Richard Hakluyt , 1552?–1616, English geographer. He graduated in 1574 from Oxford, where he later lectured on geography. A passionate interest in the history of discovery led him to collect and publish narratives of voyages and travels. He was active in promoting English discovery and colonization, especially in North America. His chief work, called by J. A. Froude "the prose epic of the English nation," is The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics, and Discoveries of the English Nation (3 vol., 1598–1600), an enlargement of a one-volume version (1589). Other publications include Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America and the Islands Adjacent (1582) and an account of the discoveries of Hernando De Soto under the title Virginia Richly Valued (1609). Manuscripts left at his death were included by Samuel Purchas in his Pilgrims (4 folios, 1625); others are preserved at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The publication of narratives of early explorations has been continued by the Hakluyt Society, founded in 1846.

Bibliography: See The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts (1935, repr. 1967).

Hakluyt, Richard (pron. Haklit) (1552–1616), was chaplain to Sir Edward Stafford, ambassador at Paris, 1583–8. Here he learnt much of the maritime enterprises of other nations, and decided to devote himself to collecting and publishing the accounts of English explorations; to this purpose he gave the remainder of his life. In 1582 he published Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America, and in 1587 appeared his A Notable Historie, Containing Foure Voyages Made by Certayne French Captaynes unto Florida, a translation of Réné de Laudonnière. His Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation was issued in 1589, and, much enlarged in three volumes, 1598–1600. He thus brought to light the hitherto obscure achievements of English navigators, and gave a great impetus to discovery and colonization. He left unpublished a number of papers which came into the hands of Purchas.

The Hakluyt Society was founded in 1846 as an offshoot of the (Royal) Geographical Society to publish voyages and travels, which it has done at the rate of at least two volumes a year since then.

Hakluyt, Richard (1552?–1616), British geographer and compiler of narratives of exploration. Among his valuable publications dealing with America, preserving original accounts that would otherwise have been lost, are Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (1582); A Notable Historie Containing Foure Voyages Made by Certayne French Captaynes into Florida (1587), including the narrative of Laudonnière; Virginia Richly Valued (1609), including the account of De Soto's discoveries; and his greatest work, The Principall Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589: 3 vols., enlarged, 1598–1600). The work of Hakluyt was continued by Samuel Purchas, who collected his unpublished papers in Hakluytus Posthumus (4 vols., 1625).

Hakluyt, Richard (c.1552–1616), English geographer and historian. He compiled Principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598), a collection of accounts of great voyages of discovery which inspired further discovery and colonization.