Richard Hakluyt, notwithstanding the Dutch look of his name, was of a
good British stock, from Wales or the Welsh borders. At the beginning
of the fourteenth century an ancestor of his, Hugo Hakelute, sat in
Parliament as member for Leominster.
Richard Hakluyt, born about five years before the accession of Queen
Elizabeth, was a boy at Westminster School, when visits to a cousin in
the Middle Temple, also a Richard Hakluyt, first planted in him an
enthusiasm for the study of adventure towards a wider use and knowledge
of the globe we live upon. As a student at Christ Church, Oxford, all
his leisure was spent on the collection and reading of accounts of
voyage and adventure. He graduated as B. A. in 1574, as M. A. in 1577,
and lectured publicly upon geography, showing "both the old imperfectly
composed, and the new lately reformed maps, globes, spheres, and other
instruments of this art."
In 1582 Hakluyt, at the age of about twenty-nine, issued his first
publication: "Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America and the
Lands adjacent unto the same, made first of all by our Englishmen, and
afterwards by the Frenchmen and Bretons: and certain Notes of
Advertisements for Observations, necessary for such as shall hereafter
make the like Attempt." His researches had already made him the
personal friend of the famous sea captains of Elizabeth's reign. In
1583 he had taken orders, and went to Paris as chaplain to the English
ambassador, Sir Edward Stafford.
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