[Gutenberg 3752] • Voyager's Tales

Excerpt from the book...

Richard Hakluyt, notwithstanding the Dutch look of his name, was of a

good British stock, from Wales or the Welsh borders. At the beginning

of the fourteenth century an ancestor of his, Hugo Hakelute, sat in

Parliament as member for Leominster.

Richard Hakluyt, born about five years before the accession of Queen

Elizabeth, was a boy at Westminster School, when visits to a cousin in

the Middle Temple, also a Richard Hakluyt, first planted in him an

enthusiasm for the study of adventure towards a wider use and knowledge

of the globe we live upon. As a student at Christ Church, Oxford, all

his leisure was spent on the collection and reading of accounts of

voyage and adventure. He graduated as B. A. in 1574, as M. A. in 1577,

and lectured publicly upon geography, showing "both the old imperfectly

composed, and the new lately reformed maps, globes, spheres, and other

instruments of this art."