THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



Hakluyt in 

 Paris. 



His chief 

 origLtialwork. 



His great 

 Book. 



Church 

 preferment. 



Other was the fatal voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 

 1583. What detained him, or changed his purpose 

 does not appear; in the year of Gilbert's voyage he 

 was appointed chaplain to Sir Edward Stafford, Queen 

 Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris, and remained for five 

 years in France. Stafford was brother-in-law to Howard 

 of Effingham, so that it seems likely that in this case, 

 as in others, Hakluyt's preferment came to him from 

 his interest in nautical affairs. He was on terms of 

 intimacy with the Gilberts and Raleigh ; his Discourse 

 of Western Plantings presented to the Queen in the 

 autumn of 1584, was written at the request of Raleigh, 

 and was inspired by the reports of Captains Amadas 

 and Barlow. It is the longest and most valuable of his 

 extant original writings, though his unvarying modesty 

 prevented its inclusion in his Voyages. In Paris he 

 devoted himself with energy to the preparation of the 

 book which was now the goal of all his efforts — a 

 collection of the voyages undertaken by Englishmen. 

 The first edition of The Principal Navigations^ in one 

 folio volume, appeared in 1589. Then followed ten 

 more years of labour, and the second and final edition, 

 in three folio volumes, was given to the world in 1598 

 and the two following years. 



In the meantime, ecclesiastical preferment had come 

 to him. In 1586, while he was in France, he became 

 prebendary of Bristol, and in 1590 rector of Wethering- 

 sett in Suffolk. The date of his marriage is uncertain ; 

 in his dedication, to Sir Robert Cecil, of his Third 

 Volume (1600), he speaks of his profession of divinity 

 and the care of his family as having diverted him, for 

 some years past, from the main endeavour of his life. In 



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