[177] See Christy, Voyages of Foxe and James (Hakl. Soc.) and Asher, Henry Hudson the Navigator (Hakl. Soc.).
[AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
PHINEAS PETT]
I, Phineas[178] Pett, being the son of Mr. Peter Pett of Deptford Strond[179] in the County of Kent, one of her Majesty's Master Shipwrights, was born in my father's dwelling house in the same town one All Saints' day in the morning, being the first day of November in the year of our Lord 1570, and was baptized the 8th of the same month and year aforesaid in the parish church of Deptford Strond aforesaid.
I was brought up in my father's house at Deptford Strond until I was almost nine years of age, and then put out to a free school at Rochester in Kent, to one Mr. Webb, with whom I boarded about one year, and afterward lay at Chatham Hill in my father's lodging in the Queen's House, from whence I went every day to school to Rochester and came home at night for three years space. Afterwards, by reason of my small profiting at this school, my father removed me from thence to Greenwich to a private school kept by one Mr. Adams, where I so well profited that in three years I was made fit for Cambridge.
In the year 1586 at Shrovetide, against bachelor's commencement, I was sent to the University of Cambridge, and by the means of one Mr. Howell,[180] a Minister in Essex, I was placed in Emanuel College with a reverend tutor, President of the house, called Mr. Charles Chadwick, where I was allowed 20l. per annum during my father's life, besides books, apparel, and other necessaries.
In the year 1589, about the 6th day of September, it pleased God[181] to call to his mercy my reverend loving father, whose loss proved afterward my utter undoing almost, had not God been more merciful unto me; for leaving all things to my mother's directions, her fatal matching with a most wicked husband, one Mr. Thomas Nunn,[182] a Minister, brought a general ruin both to herself and whole family.
Some two months after my father's decease or thereabouts, my eldest sister Rachel was married to one Mr. Newman, Minister of Canewdon in Essex, a man of most dissolute life, with whom she not long enjoyed, for God, of his great mercy, took her and delivered her from a most miserable and slavish life wherein she lived with him; by whom he had two children, but both died.