Richard Hakluyt, notwithstanding the Dutch look of his name, was of a
good British stock, from Wales or the Welsh borders. At the beginning
of the fourteenth century an ancestor of his, Hugo Hakelute, sat in
Parliament as member for Leominster.
Richard Hakluyt, born about five years before the accession of Queen
Elizabeth, was a boy at Westminster School, when visits to a cousin in
the Middle Temple, also a Richard Hakluyt, first planted in him an
enthusiasm for the study of adventure towards a wider use and knowledge
of the globe we live upon. As a student at Christ Church, Oxford, all
his leisure was spent on the collection and reading of accounts of
voyage and adventure. He graduated as B. A. in 1574, as M. A. in 1577,
and lectured publicly upon geography, showing "both the old imperfectly
composed, and the new lately reformed maps, globes, spheres, and other
instruments of this art."
In 1582 Hakluyt, at the age of about twenty-nine, issued his first
publication: "Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America and the
Lands adjacent unto the same, made first of all by our Englishmen, and
afterwards by the Frenchmen and Bretons: and certain Notes of
Advertisements for Observations, necessary for such as shall hereafter
make the like Attempt." His researches had already made him the
personal friend of the famous sea captains of Elizabeth's reign. In
1583 he had taken orders, and went to Paris as chaplain to the English
ambassador, Sir Edward Stafford. From Paris he returned to England for
a short time, in 1584, and laid before the Queen a paper recommending
the plantation of unsettled parts of America. It was called "A
particular Discourse concerning Western Discoveries, written in the
year 1584, by Richard Hakluyt, of Oxford, at the request and direction
of the right worshipful Mr. Walter Raleigh, before the coming home of
his two barks." Raleigh and Hakluyt were within a year of the same
age.
To found a colonial empire in America by settling upon new lands, and
by dispossessing Spaniards, was one of the grand ideas of Walter
Raleigh, who obtained, on the 25th of March in that year, 1584, a
patent authorising him to search out and take possession of new lands
in the Western world. He then fitted out two ships, which left England
on the 27th of April, under the command of Philip Amadas and Arthur
Barlow. In June they had reached the West Indies, then they sailed
north by the coasts of Florida and Carolina, and they had with them two
natives when they returned to England in September, 1584. In December
Raleigh's patent was enlarged and confirmed, and presently afterwards
Raleigh was knighted.
Richard Hakluyt's paper, in aid of this beginning of the shaping of
another England in the New World, was for a long time lost. It was
first printed in 1877 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, among the
Collections of the Maine Historical Society. It won for its author a
promise of the next vacant prebend at Bristol; the vacancy came about a
year later, and the Rev. Richard Hakluyt was admitted to it in 1586.
Hakluyt remained about five years at Paris as Chaplain to the English
Embassy, and while there he caused the publication in 1586 of an
account by Laudonniere of voyages into Florida. This he also
translated and published, in London, in 1587, as "A Notable History
containing Four Voyages made by certain French Captains into Florida."
In 1588 Hakluyt returned to England, and in the next year, 1589, he
published in one folio volume, "The Principal Navigations, Voyages, and
Discoveries of the English Nation." In April of the next year he
became rector of Witheringsett-cum-Brockford, in Suffolk. The full
development of his work appeared in three volumes folio in the years
1598, 1599, and 1600, as "The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics,
and Discoveries of the English Nation," the first of these volumes
differing materially from the volume that had appeared in 1589.
Hakluyt became, in May, 1602, prebendary, and in 1603 archdeacon of
Westminster. He was twice married, died about six months after
Shakespeare, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 26th of
November, 1616.