‘For the bringing of which into this homely and rough-hewen shape, which here thou seest; what restlesse nights, what painefull dayes, what heat, what cold I have endured; how many long and chargeable journeys I have travelled; how many famous libraries I have searched into; what varieties of ancient and moderne writers I have perused; what a number of old records, patents, privileges, letters, etc., I have redeemed from obscuritie and perishing; into how manifold acquaintance I have entered; what expenses I have not spared; and yet what opportunities of private gaine, preferment, and ease I have neglected; albeit thyselfe canst hardly imagine, yet I by daily experience do finde and feele; and some of my entier friends can sufficiently testifie. Howbeit (as I told thee at the first) the honour and benefits of this Common weale wherein I live and breathe hath made all difficulties seeme easie, all paines and industrie pleasant, and all expenses of light value and moment unto me.’
The records of his life are scanty: that autobiographical passage, and one other, are almost all he tells us about himself. He was content with personal obscurity so long as his work was accomplished. It is significant that, although buried in Westminster Abbey, the place of his grave is not known, nor is any portrait of him believed to be in existence. He called himself simply Richard Hakluyt, Preacher, and though he meant that in the clerical sense which was his profession, we may give it another meaning as well, for he was Preacher of Empire to England, and of the splendid words of Ecclesiasticus, ‘Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.’
His life story is singularly complete and quite undeviating in aim. The great object for which he was to work was revealed to him early, and cannot be better told than in the grave simplicity of his own words, in his ‘Epistle Dedicatorie’ to Sir Francis Walsingham:
‘I do remember that being a youth, and one of Her Majestie’s scholars at Westminster that fruitfull nurserie, it was my happe to visit the chamber of Mr. Richard Hakluyt my cosin, a Gentleman of the Middle Temple, well knowen unto you, at a time when I found lying open upon his boord certeine bookes of Cosmographie, with an universall Mappe: he seeing me somewhat curious in the view thereof, began to instruct my ignorance, by shewing me the division of the Earth into three parts after the olde account, and then according to the latter, and better distribution, into more: he pointed with his wand to all the knowen Seas, Gulfs, Bayes, Straights, Capes, Rivers, Empires, Kingdomes, Dukedomes, and Territories of each part, with declaration also of their speciall commodities, and particular wants, which by the benefit of traffike, and entercourse of merchants, are plentifully supplied. From the Mappe he brought me to the Bible, and turning to the 107 Psalme, directed me to the 23 and 24 verses, 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, etc. which words of the Prophet together with my cousins discourse (things of high and rare delight to my young nature) tooke in me so deepe an impression, that I constantly resolved, if ever I were preferred to the University, where better time, and more convenient place might be ministered for these studies, I would by God’s assistance prosecute that knowledge and kinde of literature, the doores whereof (after a sort) were so happily opened before me.’
It was a true vocation the young Hakluyt had found, and he faithfully followed it all the days of his life. He took his degree as Master of Arts at Oxford in 1577, having learned five languages for the sake of his maritime inquiries; and then lectured ‘in the common schools,’ demonstrating the advances of geography—in his own attractive words, he ‘had waded on still farther and farther in the sweet studie of the historie of Cosmographie.’ His first book appeared in 1582, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, and called ‘Divers voyages touching the discoverie of America and the Ilands adjacent unto the same, made first of all by our Englishmen.’
Hakluyt was convinced, as he set forth in his book, that for the future development of exploration and ‘plantation’ (as colonisation was called in those days) by the English, our principal necessity was a good system of education in nautical affairs. This need he continued to urge upon men of influence throughout his life; to Lord Howard of Effingham, the year after the Armada, he wrote (‘as being the father and principall favourer of the English Navigation’), pointing out—
‘the meanes of breeding up of skilfull sea-men and mariners in this Realme. Sithence your Lordship is not ignorant,’ he continued, ‘that ships are to little purpose without skilfull sea-men; and since sea-men are not bred up to perfection of skill in much less time (as it is said) than in the time of two prentiships; and since no kinde of men of any profession in the common wealth passe their yeres in so great and continuall hazard of life; and since of so many, so few grow to gray heires: how needfull it is, that by way of Lectures and such like instructions, these ought to have a better education, than hitherto they have had: all wise men may easily judge. When I call to minde, how many noble ships have bene lost, how many worthy persons have bene drenched in the sea, and how greatly this Realme hath bene impoverished by losse of great Ordinance and other rich Commodities through the ignorance of Our Sea-men, I have greatly wished there were a Lecture of Navigation read in this Citie, for the banishing of our former grosse ignorance in Marine Causes, and for the increase and generall multiplying of the sea-knowledge in this age, wherein God has raised so generall a desire in the youth of this Realme to discover all parts of the face of the earth, to this Realme in former ages not knowen.’
To the advancing of navigation, which he justly called ‘the very walls of this our Island,’ he was most anxious that a lectureship should be established ‘in London or about Ratcliffe.’ Sir Francis Drake shared this wish, and offered twenty pounds a year towards its support, but as another twenty was needed and no one offered it, Hakluyt’s dream of the training of the complete navigator came to naught. Perhaps it was not so much needed as he thought in his anxious care, for during the whole of Elizabeth’s reign only one dockyard-built ship, the small Lion’s Whelp, was lost by stress of weather or grounding, while English ships weathered gales in which whole Spanish fleets foundered at sea. But Hakluyt’s desire was fundamentally a sound one, for in those early days when science was in its infancy, and tradition and rule-of-thumb the only guide, his mind reached forward to the value of technical training. Another matter in which he was in advance of his time was his concern in the ‘curing of hot diseases,’ wherein he had a far-off vision of our modern schools of Tropical Medicine. Hakluyt’s ‘industry,’ which indeed was on a colossal scale, was much commended by his contemporaries, but while doing full homage to that unflagging zeal, we perceive other qualities which engage our affection as industry alone could not do. No one can read his beautiful dedications and prefaces without being touched by his ardour, the freshness of his enthusiasm for all that pertains to the sea-greatness of England, which he both recorded and foresaw. The splendid fervour of Elizabethan poetry is in them. He gives to his great book all the riches of his mind, and regards the achievements it chronicles with a most passionate pride. He tells the reader that ‘it remaineth that thou take the profits and pleasure of the worke: which I wish to bee as great to thee, as my paines and labour have bene in bringing these raw fruits unto this ripeness, and in reducing these loose papers into this order.’ To him ‘Geographie and Chronologie’ are ‘the Sunne and the Moone, the right eye and the left of all history,’ and all history is but the ‘prologue to the omen coming on’ of English greatness at sea. He sees the unknown regions of the globe as the scene, past and to come, of that great drama of exploration where our seamen by their ‘high heart and manly resolution’ were to win new lands for England by ‘their high courage and singular activity.’ In seas uncharted, in a world imperfectly known and full of fantastic terrors, he yet believed that
‘Where the dishevelled ghastly sea-nymph sings,
Our well-rigged ships shall stretch their swelling wings,’