Hakluyt in his Divers Voyages in 1582 did not venture to make this Cabot
claim so strong as in this Discourse. In his dedication to Sir Philip
Sidney he quaintly says that he ' put downe the title which we haue to
this part of America which is from Florida to 67 degrees northwarde by
the letters patentes graunted to John Cabote and his three sonnes,'
simply meaning that he had printed the first patent of 5th May 1496. In
his title page he speaks of the Discoverie of America,' made first of
all by our Englishmen and afterwards by the Frenchmen and Bretons.' He
does not question the rights and privileges of Frenchmen to the Gulf of
St Lawrence and Canada, because they were in the occupation of a
Christian prince.

This Discourse of Western Planting therefore, and the voyage of Amadas
and Barlow, in 1584, at the instigation and expense of Raleigh, based on
a thorough knowledge of the Huguenot and Spanish expeditions to Florida
in 1562-1568, are all parts of Virginia history, and therefore are
preliminary to Hariot's Report. It should be borne in mind that these
terms Florida and Virginia as used by the Spaniards, French, and
English, included the whole country from the point of Florida through
the Carolinas and Virginia to the Chesapeake Bay, or perhaps even to
Bacalaos.

Raleigh's patent, in which all interests were thus consolidated, came
before Parliament in the Autumn of 1584 well fortified in its historical
and geographical bearings by Hakluyt's learned Discourse. In the House
of Commons the matter was adroitly referred to a Commitee of which
Walsingham and Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Francis
Drake were members. The bill having passed the House was sent up to the
Lords, and there read the first time on Sunday the 19th of December