Richard Hakluyt

Timeline

1. c. 1553–1582Oxford · OxfordshireInspired in his youth by a cousin at the Middle Temple, he resolved to compile records of voyages. In 1570 he was sent from Westminster School to Christ Church, Oxford, taking his BA in 1574 and MA in 1577, and lecturing at the university's public school on maps, globes and navigational instruments. He was ordained around 1578. In 1582 he published The Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America and the Islands Adjacent, the first systematic compilation of English writings on the exploration of North America, laying the foundation for his later masterwork.
2. 1583–1588Paris · ParisIn 1583 he became chaplain and secretary to the ambassador in France, Edward Stafford, in Paris widely seeking out Spanish, French and Portuguese books on navigation and oral accounts, painfully aware that English maritime achievements were undervalued by European opinion. In 1584 he wrote A Discourse Concerning Western Planting (i.e. A Discourse Concerning Western Planting) and presented it to Elizabeth I, strongly advocating colonization in North America to counter Spain. In 1586 he obtained a prebend at Bristol Cathedral, and in 1588 returned to England with Lady Sheffield.
3. 1589–1616London · LondonIn 1589 he published the one-volume The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, making full use of eyewitness accounts. Between 1598 and 1600 it was expanded to three volumes, adding medieval material and accounts of the war at sea, which Froude later called 'the prose epic of the modern English nation'. He pressed Cecil on the advantages of opening up Virginia and took part in the Virginia Company. In 1602 he became a canon of Westminster Abbey, and in 1603 dean. He died on 23 November 1616 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.