THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 9 
for Western planting to the duty of spreading the 
Gospel was only to be expected. The enlargement 
of the Kingdom of God and bringing salvation to 
the heathen ought, he contended, to be the chief 
and principal work of the sovereigns of England as 
being called © Defenders of the Faith.” This was in 
his Discourse’ in 1584.2 In 1587 he wrote to Raleigh 
deploring that it was only the ‘ fewest number’ among 
the would-be discoverers that aimed at ‘the Glory 
of God and the saving of the poor and blinded 
infidels,” and he expressed the comfort which he 
derived from knowing that Raleigh intended to send 
to Virginia ¢ some such good churchmen as may truly 
say with the Apostle to the savages “we seek not 
yours, but you.” ’ 2 
Hakluyt was one of a number of men, headed by 
Sir Thomas Smith and John White, to whom two years 
later, in March 1589, Raleigh, by a legal document 
which is not very easy to follow and which seems to 
be given only in the first edition of ¢ The Principal 
Navigations,” assigned trading rights in all the lands 
covered by his patent from Queen Elizabeth, and it 
may well have been due to Hakluyt that the deed 
provided for a payment by Raleigh to the assignees of 
£100 ‘in especial regard and zeal of planting the 
Christian religion in and amongst the said barbarous 
and heathen countries, and for the advancement and 
preferment of the same and the common utility and 
profit of the inhabitants therein.’ ® But Hakluyt’s 
1 
2 
3 
A Discourse concerning Western Planting, chap. i, pp. 8-9. 
Hakluyt, vol. viii, 2 443. Lo 
See 1589 edition of the Princival Navisations, p. 815.