Richard Hakluyt, the second of four sons, was born in either Hereford in the county of Herefordshire around 1552,[8] or in or near London around 1553.[4][5] Hakluyt's father, also named Richard Hakluyt, was a member of the Worshipful Company of Skinners whose members dealt in skins and furs. He died in 1557 when his son was aged about five years, and his wife Margery[1] followed soon after. Hakluyt's cousin, also named Richard Hakluyt, of the Middle Temple, became his guardian.[9]
While a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School, Hakluyt visited his guardian, whose conversation, illustrated by "certain bookes of cosmographie, an universall mappe, and the Bible", made Hakluyt resolve to "prosecute that knowledge, and kind of literature".[10] Entering Christ Church, Oxford,[11] in 1570 with financial support from the Skinners' Company,[9] "his exercises of duty first performed",[10] he set out to read all the printed or written voyages and discoveries that he could find. He took his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) on 19 February 1574, and shortly after taking his Master of Arts (M.A.) on 27 June 1577,[5][9] began giving public lectures in geography. He was the first to show "both the old imperfectly composed and the new lately reformed mappes, globes, spheares, and other instruments of this art".[10] Hakluyt held on to his studentship at Christ Church between 1577 and 1586, although after 1583 he was no longer resident in Oxford.[9]
Hakluyt was ordained in 1578, and that same year he received a "pension" from the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers to study divinity. The pension would have lapsed in 1583, but William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, intervened to have the pension continued until 1586 to aid Hakluyt's geographical research.[9]
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According to one source,[9] Hakluyt's first publication was A Shorte and Briefe Narration of the Two Nauigations and Discoueries to the Northwest Partes Called Newe Fraunce (1580), a translation of Bref Récit et Succincte Narration de la Navigation Faite en MDXXXV et MDXXXVI[12] by French navigator Jacques Cartier, which was a description of his second voyage to Canada in 1535–1536. However, this seems to be an error as the British Library's copy of this work indicates it was translated from an Italian version into English by John Florio.[13] If that is correct, then Hakluyt's first publication was one that he wrote himself, Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America and the Ilands Adjacent unto the Same, Made First of all by our Englishmen and Afterwards by the Frenchmen and Britons (1582).
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