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.