THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 3
too were servants of the Empire and cleared a way for
those who came after them.” In these terms the late
Sir Walter Raleigh, most worthy beater of a historic
name, wrote of the voyagers of the reign of Queen
Elizabeth ; the words will be found in his delightful
essay published in the last volume of the Glasgow
(19034) edition of Hakluyt’s ¢ Principal Navigations.” !
Earlier in the same essay he wrote, © Men have travelled,
as they have lived, for religion, for wealth, for
knowledge, for pleasure, for power and the overthrow
of rivals > 2—a comprehensive list of motives, for the
Elizabethans in particular, and in general for all men
and times.
The sixteenth century was Hakluyt’s century, in
which and of which he collected records, to stir up
his countrymen to what he styled discoveries and
notable enterprises by sea. Born, we are told in the
‘ Dictionary of National Biography,” about 1552, he
lived well on into the next century, till 1616. He saw,
therefore, the actual beginning of the Empire and,
what is more, he was a leading adventurer in the
London section of the Virginia Company, which
founded Jamestown, the first permanent English
settlement in America. In 1582 he published ¢ Divers
Voyages touching the Discovery of America” In
1584 he wrote ‘A Discourse concerning Western
Planting’ which, however, was not printed until 1877.
The first edition, in a single volume, of his great
collection, © The Principal Navigations, Voyages and
Discoveries of the English Nation made by Sea or
* Vol. xii, p. 68. In any further reference to quotations from
Hakluyt’s Voyages. this edition is implied. 2 Ibid, p. 2.