page_title: Richard Hakluyt
section_title: Return to England
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Hakluyt / Return to England
caption_attribution_description: Closeup of Richard Hakluyt's manuscript signature from the front flyleaf of his work The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation&#160;: Made by Sea or Over Land to the Most Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at Any Time within the Compasse of These 1500 Years&#160;: Divided into Three Several Parts According to the Positions of the Regions Whereunto They Were Directed; the First Containing the Personall Travels of the English unto Indæa, Syria, Arabia... the Second, Comprehending the Worthy Discoveries of the English Towards the North and Northeast by Sea, as of Lapland... the Third and Last, Including the English Valiant Attempts in Searching Almost all the Corners of the Vaste and New World of America... Whereunto is Added the Last Most Renowned English Navigation Round About the Whole Globe of the Earth (London: Imprinted by George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, deputies to Christopher Barker, printer to the Queen’s Most Excellent Majestie).
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: In 1588 Hakluyt finally returned to England with Douglas Sheffield, Baroness Sheffield, after a residence in France of nearly five years. In 1589 he published the first edition of his chief work, The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, using eyewitness accounts as far as possible. In the preface to this he announced the intended publication of the first terrestrial globe made in England by Emery Molyneux.
  Between 1598 and 1600 appeared the final, reconstructed and greatly enlarged edition of The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation in three volumes. In the dedication of the second volume (1599) to his patron, Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, Hakluyt strongly urged the minister as to the expediency of colonizing Virginia. A few copies of this monumental work contain a map of great rarity, the first on the Mercator projection made in England according to the true principles laid down by Edward Wright. Hakluyt's great collection has been called "the Prose Epic of the modern English nation" by historian James Anthony Froude.
  On 20 April 1590 Hakluyt was instituted to the clergy house of Wetheringsett-cum-Brockford, Suffolk, by Lady Stafford, who was the Dowager Baroness Sheffield. He held this position until his death, and resided in Wetheringsett through the 1590s and frequently thereafter. In 1599, he became an adviser to the newly-founded East India Company, and in 1601 he edited a translation from the Portuguese of Antonio Galvão's The Discoveries of the World.
caption: A manuscript signature of Hakluyt from the front flyleaf of the above work
exif: {}