Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/25

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Hakluyt11
Hakluyt

second work was ‘The Manner how Statutes are enacted in Parliament by passing of Bills. Collected many yeares past out of the Journalls of the House of Commons. By W. Hakewill. Together with a catalogue of the Speakers' names,’ 1641. It had been in manuscript for many years, and numerous copies had gradually got abroad. One, ‘the falsest written of all,’ was without his knowledge printed very carelessly. This was no doubt the anonymous volume entitled ‘The Manner of holding Parliaments in England … with the Order of Proceeding to Parliament of King Charles, 13 April 1640,’ 1641. Hakewill's publication was much enlarged in ‘Modus tenendi Parliamentum … together with the Privileges of Parliament and the Manner how Lawes are there enacted by passing of Bills,’ 1659, which was reprinted in 1671. He was a member about 1600 of the first Society of Antiquaries, and two papers by him, ‘The Antiquity of the Laws of this Island’ and ‘Of the Antiquity of the Christian Religion in this Island,’ are printed in Hearne's ‘Collection of Curious Discourses,’ 1720 and 1771 editions. A treatise by Hakewill on ‘A Dispute between the younger Sons of Viscounts and Barons against the claims of Baronets to Precedence’ was among the manuscripts of Sir Henry St. George (Bernard, Cat. ii. fol. 112). His argument ‘that such as sue in chancery to be relieved of the judgments given at common law are not within the danger of “præmunire,”’ is in Lansdowne MS. No. 174; his speech in parliament 1 May 1628 is in the Harleian MS. No. 161; and his correspondence with John Bainbridge [q. v.], the astronomer, remains at Trinity College, Dublin (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. p. 594). He compiled and presented to the queen a dissertation on the nature and custom of aurum reginæ, or the queen's gold, a duty paid temp. Edward IV by most of the judges, serjeants-at-law, and great men of the realm. Copies are among the Exeter College MSS., No. cvi., Addit. MS. British Museum 25255, and at the Record Office.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 231–2; Wood's Fasti, i. 354; Prince's Worthies, pp. 449–451; Cal. of State Papers, 1603–43; Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. p. 594; British Magazine and Review, 1782; Hallam's Constit. Hist. (7th ed.), i. 319; Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire, ii. 478, 482, 490; Courtney's Parl. Hist. of Cornwall, pp. 169, 302, 325; Spedding's Bacon, vol. v. of Life, p. 86, vi. 71, 208, vii. 187, 191, 203.]

W. P. C.

HAKLUYT, RICHARD[1] (1552?–1616), geographer, of a family possibly of Dutch origin, but settled for several centuries in Herefordshire, where the name appears on the list of sheriffs as early as the time of Edward II, was born about 1552 (Chester, London Marriage Licenses), and after an early education at Westminster School, was in 1570 elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. 19 Feb. 1574, and M.A. 27 Jan. 1577. He appears to have taken holy orders at the usual age. While still a boy at Westminster his attention had been turned to geography and the history of discovery. This study he had pursued with avidity while at Oxford, reading, as he tells us himself, ‘whatever printed or written discoveries and voyages I found extant, either in Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portugal, French, or English languages,’ and some time after taking his degree he lectured on these subjects, perhaps at Oxford (Jones, p. 6). He claims to have first shown in these lectures ‘the new, lately reformed maps, globes, spheres, and other instruments of this art, for demonstration in the common schools.’ In 1582 he published his ‘Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America,’ a work which would seem to have secured for him the patronage of Lord Howard of Effingham, then lord admiral, whose brother-in-law, Sir Edward Stafford, going to France in 1583 as English ambassador, appointed Hakluyt his chaplain.

In Paris he found new opportunities of collecting information as to Spanish and French voyages, ‘making,’ he says, ‘diligent enquiry of such things as might yield any light unto our western discovery in America.’ These researches he embodied in ‘A particular Discourse concerning Western Discoveries,’ written in 1584, but first printed in 1877, in Collections of the Maine Historical Society. A copy of this presented to the queen procured him the reversion of a prebendal stall at Bristol, to which he succeeded in 1586. He remained in Paris, however, for two years longer, and in 1586 interested himself in the publication of the journal of Laudonnière, which he translated and published in London under the title of ‘A notable History, containing four Voyages made by certain French Captains into Florida,’ 1587, 4to; and the same year there was published in Paris ‘De Orbe Novo Petri Martyris Anglerii, Decades Octo, illustratæ labore et industriâ Ricardi Hakluyti.’ [Translated by Michael Lok, London, 1612, 4to.] In 1588 he returned to England in company with Lady Sheffield, Lord Howard's sister, and in 1589 published ‘The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation made by Sea or over land to the most remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth, at

  1. Printed note affixed to page with handwritten asterisk. "See Notes and Queries cxlvi, 335 for details of his ancestry." (Wikisource contributor note)