page_title: Richard Hakluyt
section_title: Family, early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Hakluyt / Family, early life and education
context_page_description: Richard Hakluyt was an English writer. He is known for promoting the English colonization of North America through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America and The Principall Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation.
  Hakluyt was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. Between 1583 and 1588 he was chaplain and secretary to Sir Edward Stafford, English ambassador at the French court. An ordained priest, Hakluyt held important positions at Bristol Cathedral and Westminster Abbey and was personal chaplain to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, principal Secretary of State to Elizabeth I and James I. He was the chief promoter of a petition to James I for letters patent to colonize Virginia, which were granted to the London Company and Plymouth Company in 1606. The Hakluyt Society, which publishes scholarly editions of primary records of voyages and travels, was named after him in its 1846 formation.
context_section_description: Hakluyt's patrilineal ancestors were of Welsh extraction, rather than Dutch as is often suggested; they appear to have settled in Herefordshire in England around the 13th century, and, according to antiquary John Leland, took their surname from the "Forest of Cluid in Radnorland." Some of Hakluyt's ancestors established themselves at Yatton in Herefordshire, and must have ranked amongst the principal landowners of the county. A person named Hugo Hakelute, who may have been an ancestor or relative of Richard Hakluyt, was elected Member of Parliament for the borough of Yatton in 1304 or 1305, and between the 14th and 16th centuries five individuals surnamed "de Hackluit" or "Hackluit" were sheriffs of Herefordshire. A man named Walter Hakelut was knighted in the 34th year of Edward I (1305) and later killed at the Battle of Bannockburn, and in 1349 Thomas Hakeluyt was chancellor of the diocese of Hereford. Records also show that a Thomas Hakeluytt was in the wardship of Henry VIII (reigned 1509–1547) and Edward VI (reigned 1547–1553).
  Richard Hakluyt, the second of four sons, was born in Eyton in Herefordshire in 1553. Hakluyt's father, also named Richard Hakluyt, was a member of the Worshipful Company of Skinners whose members dealt in skins and furs. He died in 1557 when his son was aged about five years, and his wife Margery followed soon after. Hakluyt's cousin, also named Richard Hakluyt, of the Middle Temple, became his guardian.
  While a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School, Hakluyt visited his guardian, whose conversation, illustrated by "certain bookes of cosmographie, an universall mappe, and the Bible," made Hakluyt resolve to "prosecute that knowledge, and kind of literature." Entering Christ Church, Oxford, in 1570 with financial support from the Skinners' Company, "his exercises of duty first performed," he set out to read all the printed or written voyages and discoveries that he could find. He took his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) on 19 February 1574, and shortly after taking his Master of Arts (M.A.) on 27 June 1577, began giving public lectures in geography. He was the first to show "both the old imperfectly composed and the new lately reformed mappes, globes, spheares, and other instruments of this art." Hakluyt held on to his studentship at Christ Church between 1577 and 1586, although after 1583 he was no longer resident in Oxford.
  Hakluyt was ordained in 1578, the same year he began to receive a "pension" from the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers to study divinity. The pension would have lapsed in 1583, but William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, intervened to have it extended until 1586 to aid Hakluyt's geographical research.
caption: The library of Christ Church, Oxford, by an unknown artist, from Rudolph Ackermann's History of Oxford (1813)
exif: {"Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0", "Image DateTime": "2006:03:28 06:27:18", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "108", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "280", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4737", "EXIF ExifVersion": "[0, 2, 2, 0]", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "[0, 1, 0, 0]", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "435", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "333"}