[Footnote: Translation "That Masters, Mariners Pilots, And Other Officers Of Ships, Who Have Passed Their Youth In The Profession Of

Navigating vessels, being mutilated, or reduced to poverty through any other cause, might have some means of subsistence, by which

Not only they may be made comfortable but by which other youths may be induced and led to the exercise of the same profession, through which they may become more apt to and skilful in the pilotage and management at sea of ships and vessels in times of peace or war, as is neccssary," etc.] To descend a little lower, king Edward the sixth, that prince of peerelesse hope, with the aduice of his sage and prudent Counsaile, before he entered into the Northeasterne discouery, aduanced the worthy and excellent Sebastian Cabota to be grand Pilot of England, allowing him a most bountifull pension of 166. li. vj. s. viij. d. by the yeere during his life as appeareth in his Letters Patents which are to be seene in the third part of my worke. And if God had granted him longer life, I doubt not but as he dealt most royally in establishing that office of Pilote Maior (which not long after to the great hinderance of this Common wealth was miserably turned to other priuate vses) so his princely Maiestie would haue shewed himselfe no nigard in erecting, in imitation of Spaine, the like profitable Lecture of the Art of Nauigation. And surely when I considered of late the memorable bountie of sir Thomas Gresham, [Footnote: He was the son of Sir Richard Gresham, merchant and Lord Mayor of London, and was born in 1519. Educated at Cambridge, he was placed under his uncle, Sir John Gresham, and enrolled a member of the Mercers Company. His father had been the king's agent at Antwerp, and the person who succeeded him, having mismanaged the royal affairs, Sir Thomas was sent over in 1552. to retrieve them. This he was most successful in doing. Elizabeth removed him from his office, but soon restored and knighted him. He planned and erected the Royal Exchange in London, in imitation of that of Antwerp, and the queen opened it in person in 1570. Having built a mansion in Bishopsgate Street, he directed by his will that it should be converted into habitations and lecture rooms for seven professors or lecturers on the seven liberal sciences, and their salaries to be paid out of the revenues of the Royal Exchange. These and other benefactions procured for him the name of the "Royal Merchant." He died in 1579. Gresham College has since been converted into the General Excise Office, and the lectures have been given in a room over the Exchange.] who being but a Merchant hath founded so many chargeable Lectures, and some of them also which are Mathematicall, tending to the aduancement of Marine causes; I nothing doubted of your Lordships forwardnes in settling and establishing of this Lecture: but rather when your Lordship shall see the noble and rare effects thereof, you will be heartily sory that all this while it hath not bene erected.

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