study by Hakluyt could alone have produced this remarkable volume. It is
the combination of many materials, and the result of compromising divers
interests. Hakluyt had already, though still a young man under thirty,
entered deeply into the study of commercial geography, and had in 1582
published his _Divers Voyages_ dedicated to his friend Sir Philip
Sidney, son-in-law to the chief Secretary Walsingham. In the Spring of
1583 the Secretary sent Hakluyt down to Bristol with a letter to the
principal merchants there to enlist their co-operation in a project of
discovery and planting in America somewhere between the possessions of
the French in Canada and the Spaniards in Florida, which his son-in-law
Master Christopher Carleil was developing under the auspices of the
Muscovie Company, and for which they were about to ask the Queen for a
patent independent of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's.

In the summer of 1583 Hakluyt thought to go to Newfoundland with
Gilbert's expedition, according to the letter of Parmenius, but
fortunately did not go. But in the autumn of the same year Walsingham
sent him to Paris nominally as chaplain to the English Ambassador at the
French court, Sir Edward Stafford, but really to pursue his geographical
investigations into the west and learn what the French and Spanish were
doing in these remote regions, and what were their particular claims,
resources and trade.

Before his departure for Paris, the 'Golden Hinde' had returned to
Falmouth with the heavy news of the fate of Gilbert and the consequent
certain forfeiture of his patent, notwithstanding it had still some nine
months to run. Though Sir Humphrey had taken formal possession of
Newfoundland, as no colony was left there, his rights and privileges
would lapse as a matter of course.