Henry Stevens - Thomas Hariot, the Mathematician, the Philosopher and the Scholar

It ought perhaps to be mentioned here that five of Gilbert's six years having already expired without his obtaining success or possession, several others, anticipating a forfeiture of the patent, began agitation for rival patents in 1583. Carleil, Walsingham, Sidney, Peckham, Raleigh, and perhaps others were eager in the strife. Mostof the papers are given in Hakluyt's 1589 edition. The ' Golden Hinde ' returned in September 1583 with the news of the utter failure of the expedition and the death of Sir Humphrey. Raleigh succeeded in obtaining the royal grant, and then all the rest joined him in getting the patent confirmed by Parliament.

Raleigh was now thirty-three, a man of position, of large heart and large income, a popular courtier high in royal favor, a man of foreign travel, great experience and extensive acquirements. He had served under Coligni with his protestant friends in France; subsequently served under William of Orange in Flanders; had served his Queen in Ireland; under Gilbert's patent, contemplated a voyage to Newfoundland in 1578; and in 1583 was ready to embark himself again, but by some happy accident did not go, though he fitted out and sent a large ship at his own cost bearing his own name, which ship however put back on account of the outbreak of some contagion. Fully alive to the wants, plans, and desires of the Huguenots, he had not only informed himself of their Florida schemes, but had promoted the publication of their history, and secured the interest and active co-operation of the most important survivor of them all, Jaques LeMoyne, the painter, who having escaped landed destitute in Wales, and subsequently entered the service of Raleigh who had him safely lodged in the Blackfriars. He had also, how or when precisely is not known, secured the active aid and facile pen of the geographical Richard Hakluyt, who wrote for him, as no man else could write, in 1584, a treatise on Western Planting, a work intended probably to prime the ministry and the Parliament, to enable Raleigh first to secure the confirmation of his patent, and afterwards the co-operation and active interest of the nobility and gentry in his enterprise. This important hitherto unpublished volume of sixty-three large folio pages in the hand writing of Hakluyt, after having probably served its purpose and lain dormant for nearly three centuries, was bought at Earl Mountnorris's sale at Arley Castle in December 1852, by Mr Henry Stevens of Vermont, who, as he himself informs us, after partly copying it, and endeavouring in vain to place it in some public or private library in England or the United States, threw it into auction, where it was sold by Messrs Puttick and Simpson in May 1854, for £44, as lot 474, Sir Thomas Phillipps being the purchaser. The manuscript still adorns the Phillipps library at Cheltenham. In 1868 a copy of this most suggestive volume was obtained by the late Dr Leonard Woods for the Maine Historical Society, and has since been edited with valuable notes by Mr Charles Deane of Cambridge and with an Introduction by Dr Woods. It appeared in 1877 as the second volume of the second series of the Society's Collections.

This Treatise of Hakluyt under Raleigh's inspiration may be regarded as the harbinger of Virginia history. Though intended for a special purpose, it is of the highest importance in developing the history of English maritime policy at that time, and defining the growth of the English arguments, advantages and reasons for western planting. The book is full of personal hints, and is immensely suggestive, showing us more than anything else the master hand of Master Hakluyt in moulding England's 'sea policie' and colonial navigation. No mere geographical study by Hakluyt could alone have produced this remarkable volume. It is the combination of many materials, and the result of compromising divers interests. Hakluyt had already, though still a young man under thirty, entered deeply into the study of commercial geography, and had in 1582 published his Divers Voyages dedicated to his friend Sir Philip Sidney, son-in-law to the chief Secretary Walsingham. In the Spring of 1583 the Secretary sent Hakluyt down to Bristol with a letter to the principal merchants there to enlist their co-operation in a project of discovery and planting in America somewhere between the possessions of the French in Canada and the Spaniards in Florida, which his son-in-law Master Christopher Carleil was developing under the auspices of the Muscovie Company, and for which they were about to ask the Queen for a patent independent of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's.

In the summer of 1583 Hakluyt thought to go to Newfoundland with Gilbert's expedition, according to the letter of Parmenius, but fortunately did not go. But in the autumn of the same year Walsingham sent him to Paris nominally as chaplain to the English Ambassador at the French court, Sir Edward Stafford, but really to pursue his geographical investigations into the west and learn what the French and Spanish were doing in these remote regions, and what were their particular claims, resources and trade.

Before his departure for Paris, the 'Golden Hinde' had returned to Falmouth with the heavy news of the fate of Gilbert and the consequent certain forfeiture of his patent, notwithstanding it had still some nine months to run. Though Sir Humphrey had taken formal possession of Newfoundland, as no colony was left there, his rights and privileges would lapse as a matter of course.

Western planting now became the talk and fashion. Many projects were hatching for new patents. Raleigh alone succeeded. Hakluyt's position and circumstances in Paris seem made for the occasion, and he soon found all these western eggs put into his basket. The materials of the several previous writers and of the rival claimants were all apparently thrust upon him. He thus became in 1583-4, though perhaps unconsciously, the mouthpiece of a snug family party all playing into the hands of Raleigh. There were Walsingham, and Sidney, and Carleil, and Leicester, all connected with each other and with Raleigh. Then there were the papers of Sir George Peckham, Edward Hayes, Richard Clarke master of the Delight, and Steven Par-menius, rich alike in hints and facts. The interests of these distinguished persons were by family ties or other influence suddenly merged into a single patent and that Raleigh's. The papers mostly passed through Raleigh's hands into Hakluyt's, who acknowledges himself indebted to him for his chiefest light.

Raleigh, besides being the half-brother and representative of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, held also a large share in that venture. Gilbert's real aim, policy and plan, in this last yearof his patent, to prospect for a suitable place in which to take possession and found a colony, was to begin at the south and work northward as the French had done, but his previous failures since 1578, the inevitable impediments and delays, the advanced season of this his last year 1583, and the necessity of making a final strike for success, in behalf of himself and his assignees, compelled him at the last hour to go direct to Newfoundland, take possession, and then, if thought best, work southward. He was however unquestionably influenced or professed to be by rumours of metals or gold mines in Newfoundland. This northern passage was his fatal mistake. Had he taken a middle or southern course say between 37° and 42° he might perhaps have succeeded.

Under these circumstances Hakluyt's Discourse of Western Planting was written, and may be considered as a digest of many plans without much originality and a consolidation of many interests. Hakluyt and Raleigh were at Oxford together, but we find no particular evidence of their intimacy before the Spring of 1584, when Hakluyt had returned to London from Paris with his Discourse, or perhaps it was partly written in England. It is pretty certain that it was not shown to the Queen before the date of the Patent, the 25th of March, as Hakluyt speaks of her seeing it in the summer. It was probably intended principally for the promotion of the interests of the Patent in Parliament.