Charles Henry Coote and Charles Raymond Beazley

“ Hakluyt’s first published work was his Divers Voyages touching the Discoverie of America (London, 1582, 4to.) . This brought him to the notice of Lord Howard of Effingham, and so to that of Sir Edward Stafford, Lord Howard’s brother-in-law; accordingly at the age of thirty, being acquainted with “the chiefest captaines at sea, the greatest merchants, and the best mariners of our nation,” he was selected as chaplain to accompany Stafford, now English ambassador at the French court, to Paris (1583) . ”

“ In 1606 he appears as one of the chief promoters of the petition to the king for patents to colonize Virginia. He was also a leading adventurer in the London or South Virginia Company. His last publication was a translation of Fernando de Soto’s discoveries in Florida, entitled Virginia richly valued by the description of Florida her next neighbour (London, 1609, 4to) . This work was intended to encourage the young colony of Virginia; to Hakluyt, it has been said, “England is more indebted for its American possession than to any man of that age.” ”

“ Hakluyt’s Galvano was edited for the Hakluyt Society by Admiral C. R. D. Bethune in 1862. This Society, which was founded in 1846 for printing rare and unpublished voyages and travels, includes the Glasgow edition of the Principal Navigations in its extra series, as well as C. R. Beazley’s edition of Carpini, Rubruquis, and other medieval texts from Hakluyt (Cambridge, 1903, 1 vol.) . Reckoning in these and an issue of Purchas’s Pilgrimes by the Glasgow publisher of the Hakluyt of 1903–1905, the society has now published or “fathered” 150 vols. ”