The merchant adventurers who supplied the funds for Arctic expeditions, often at considerable sacrifice, and generally from patriotic motives, deserve niches in the temple of fame as much as the actual explorers. One could not have existed without the other.
Among the earliest was Master William Sanderson, the promoter and supporter of the three voyages of Davis. This man was one of the most liberal and enlightened adventurers of his time. He was a merchant of great wealth, a member of the Fishmongers’ Company, and was married to a niece of Sir Walter Raleigh. Before embarking on the venture proposed by Davis and Gilbert he carefully studied the subject in all its bearings; and, with other information, a discourse on the voyages to the north-east was prepared for him by Mr Henry Lane. When fully convinced, Master Sanderson most liberally provided the largest share of the funds, and superintended all the preparations.
Geography owes Sanderson another large debt of gratitude. The cost of the first English globes, constructed by Emery Molyneux, was defrayed by him. These two globes, celestial and terrestrial, which are still to be seen in the Library of the Middle Temple, are each two feet in diameter, and are beautifully executed. They were completed in 1592, and received additions in 1603. Such was the importance attached to them that they formed the subject of special treatises by Hues and Hood, and were elaborately described by Blundeville. The discoveries of Davis, who probably assisted Molyneux, are shown in detail. The arms of Sanderson, with his quarterings, are painted on one of the globes with an inscription.
A still greater promoter of Arctic enterprise was Sir Thomas Smith. Descended from a long line of yeomen in Wiltshire, his father was Thomas Smith of Ostenhanger in Kent, better known as “Customer” Smith, having been for many years one of the farmers of the Queen’s Customs. He succeeded his father as Customer to Queen Elizabeth and became a wealthy and successful London merchant, inheriting from his father the manor of Bidborough, and an estate in the parish of Sutton-at-Hone in Kent, called Brooke Place, where he built a large house. It was his great merit to have furthered maritime enterprise and discovery throughout a long life, not mainly for the sake of gain, but for the honour of his country.
Sir Thomas Smith was an active member of the Muscovy Company, and was among those adventurers who despatched the first ships to Spitsbergen. He also took a leading part in the foundation of the East India Company, and was elected its first Governor in 1600. He was knighted by James I at the Tower on May 13th, 1603, and in the following year was sent as Ambassador to Muscovy by way of Archangel. At Moscow he obtained special privileges for English merchants from Boris Godenoff. He returned in the following year, and was afterwards employed, on several occasions, in affairs of state connected with commerce.
Sir Thomas Smith was re-elected Governor of the East India Company in 1607, and again in 1609, when for his great services, and for having procured the first and second charters, the Company offered the sum of £500 for his acceptance, but he declined to take more than half the sum. The East India Company flourished under his wise and energetic administration, and in 1610 the largest merchant ship that had ever been built was launched in the presence of the King, and named Trade’s Increase. At the same time the King placed a gold chain round the neck of the Governor of the Company, with his Majesty’s portrait attached.
While thus developing the trade with India, Smith was ever mindful of Arctic discovery. As a manager of the Muscovy Company he sent Jonas Poole to Spitsbergen, and induced the East India Company to send Captain Weymouth in search of a passage to Cathay. In 1612 he became the first Governor of a new Company called the “North West Company,” formed with the special object of finding the passage to Cathay. Sir Thomas gathered round him as colleagues Sir Dudley Digges, Sir Francis Jones, Sir John Wolstenholme, Sir William Cockayne, Sir James Lancaster, Richard Wyche, Ralph Freeman, and William Stone, all names well known in Arctic geography.
In 1615 Sir Thomas Smith was once more re-elected Governor of the East India Company. The enterprises of these Companies received his unceasing and laborious attention. Again in 1618 and again in 1620 he was re-elected. At length in July 1621, he was allowed to retire, after serving the East India Company for 20 years. He resigned from weakness and old age, after having created and fully established the prosperity of a famous body which, in after years, was destined to found a great Empire.
Sir Thomas Smith fostered and encouraged the scientific branch of a seaman’s profession, and lectures on navigation were delivered at his house by Dr Hood, and by Edward Wright, of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, the introducer and adapter of Mercator’s projection. At the same time he was careful to ensure the safety of the journals of voyages sent out under his auspices by furnishing materials to Hakluyt and afterwards to Purchas. He was the perfect model of an enlightened and patriotic merchant adventurer. This great man died on the 4th September, 1625, and there is a monument to his memory in the south aisle of the church at Sutton-at-Hone, with a long inscription54.
One of the most active among the colleagues of Sir Thomas Smith in the encouragement of Arctic enterprise was Sir Dudley Digges. He came of a scientific family. His grandfather Leonard Digges was an accomplished mathematician, architect, and surveyor, to whom we owe the invention of the theodolite55. His father Thomas Digges, one of the most eminent mathematicians of his time, was Muster Master to the Queen’s Army in the Netherlands and prepared exhaustive reports on fortifications with plans56. Dudley Digges was born in 1583, and was educated at Oxford under Dr Abbot, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. He took his degree, studied at the Inns of Court, travelled on the continent, and was knighted on his return. He married Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Kempe and heiress of Chilham near Canterbury, where he built a stately mansion and had ten children57.
In 1615 Sir Dudley Digges published a very able reply to an attack on the East India Company, in which he gave an interesting account of their ships, and of the progress of their trade. From that time he was intimately connected with the projects of Sir Thomas Smith, who was a relation of his wife. Sir Dudley was sent on an embassy to Russia in 1618 and an account of this voyage to Archangel is preserved in manuscript at Oxford. It gives, among other things, an account of the Samoyeds, of the vegetation round Archangel, and of the Russian boats and sailing vessels. Sir Dudley was also employed in a negotiation at the Hague.
Sir Dudley was returned to Parliament in 1621 and again in 1626 for the County of Kent. He was a liberal politician and was one of the chief instigators of the charges against the Duke of Buckingham, for which he was committed to the Tower by Charles I. When released he continued to uphold the rights of the people, and in 1628 boldly protested against the King’s command to the Speaker that no member should speak against the government. In April 1636 he was made Master of the Rolls. He died on March 18th, 1639, at the age of 56, and was buried in Chilham church; one “whose death the wisest men reckon among the public calamities of these times.” He was a learned lawyer, an able diplomatist and a great promoter of Arctic discovery.
Alderman Sir Francis Jones was another active colleague of Sir Thomas Smith in the encouragement of maritime enterprise. He was of a Shropshire family, citizen and haberdasher of London, Alderman of Aldgate Ward and Lord Mayor. He was also one of the farmers of Customs and was knighted on March 12th, 1617. Sir Francis resided at Welford, where he died in 1622.
The father of Sir John Wolstenholme, the patron of Baffin, also named John, was a native of Derbyshire. He came to London and, after making a fortune, established himself at Stanmore Magna near Harrow. His son was born in 1562, and became an active promoter of voyages for the discovery of a passage to Cathay. He was knighted at Whitehall, built the church at Stanmore at his sole expense, and dying at the age of 77 in November 1639 was buried at Stanmore, where there is a handsome monument to his memory.
Alderman William Cockayne was Governor of the Eastland Company and the London planters in Ulster, and it was under his direction that the City of Londonderry was founded. He became Lord Mayor and was knighted in 1616. He was also a Director of the East India Company, and a warm supporter of Arctic voyages.
Sir James Lancaster was a native of Basingstoke. He commanded the first English voyage to the East Indies, and also the first voyage of the East India Company. After his return in 1603 he was knighted, and served as a Director of the East India Company. Sir James was wealthy and lived in something more than comfort at his house in St Mary Axe, actively promoting voyages of discovery. He died in June 1618, and left a large sum to found a school at Basingstoke58.
Richard Bell was another London merchant who embarked in various enterprises having discovery as their object. He was a member of the East India Company, also of the North-west Passage Company, and in 1618 he is mentioned as having fitted out two ships for the discovery of some island in the West Indies. He died before 1622. One of the branches of Gilbert Sound was named Bell’s river by Hall.
Quite as important to posterity as the liberality and patriotism of the merchant adventurers were the labours of Richard Hakluyt. Without his indefatigable diligence much valuable help would have been lost to the explorers and many precious documents would have been lost to us.
Born of a good Herefordshire family in 1553, we first hear of Hakluyt at Westminster School, “that fruitful nursery,” as he called it. His thoughts were early turned to geographical studies. It was his hap, he tells us, to visit a cousin and namesake, who was a gentleman of the Middle Temple, on whose table he found some books on cosmography and a map of the world. The curiosity and interest of the boy were aroused. His cousin began by giving explanatory answers to his eager questions, giving him a regular lecture on the divisions of the earth, and ending with a disquisition on the commodities and requirements of each country. From the map he took him to the Bible and made him read the 23rd and 24th verses of the 107th Psalm, “They that go down to the sea in ships and occupy their business in great waters.”
This geographical discourse made so deep an impression on the boy that he never forgot it. He was then told, he says, “things that were of high and rare delight to his young nature.” He made a resolution from which he never swerved, that he would continue to study that subject of geography, the doors of which had been so happily opened to him.
In 1570 Hakluyt became a student of Christ Church, Oxford. The study of geography had completely fascinated him. He did not neglect his regular work and took his degree in due course, but as soon as his time was his own he devoured every narrative of adventure that he could get hold of, and mastered six languages in order to be able to read them. He soon began to see two great failings of his country, and set himself to work with patriotic zeal to remedy them. The first was the ignorance of our seamen as regards the scientific part of their profession. The second was the absence of records, and the way in which important voyages and travels were allowed to fall into oblivion. He strove during a long life, with great ability and untiring perseverance, to remedy these defects.
Hakluyt’s first public service was the delivery of lectures on the construction and use of maps, spheres, and nautical instruments, “to the singular pleasure and general contentment of his auditory,” as he tells us. He constantly urged on the attention of those in authority the importance of establishing a permanent lectureship on navigation in the port of London. He looked upon the loss of journals, narratives, and similar documents as a great national calamity, and he devoted his life to the application of a remedy. His first book, published in 1582, was entitled Divers Voyages touching the Discoveries of America. It was the first impetus to colonisation. Virtually, Raleigh and Hakluyt were the founders of those colonies which eventually formed the United States.
Hakluyt entered holy orders, and went to Paris for five years 1583–1588, as chaplain to the English Embassy, during which time he worked assiduously at the object of his life. Returning to England he was made a Canon of Bristol Cathedral and rector of Wetheringsett in Suffolk. His Principall Navigations, a folio volume, was published in 1589, as soon as he returned from Paris. In 1598 the first volume of his more complete work appeared, the two others following in the two succeeding years, and later several other books were brought out under his auspices.
The great work of Hakluyt, the Principall Navigations in three folio volumes, is a monument of useful labour. Nothing could stop or daunt him when there was a chance of obtaining new information. He rode 200 miles to have an interview with the last survivor of Hore’s expedition to America in 1536. He saved many journals and narratives from destruction, and the deeds they record from oblivion. His work gave a stimulus to colonial and maritime enterprise, and it even inspired our literature. Shakespeare and Milton owe much to Hakluyt. He supplied information and lists of commodities of various countries and commercial instructions to the East India Company and to others engaged in similar enterprises. As the years passed on, to quote his own quaint language, he “continued to wade still further and further in the sweet studie of the historie of cosmographie,” and he achieved his great task, which was, in his own words “to incorporate into one body the torn and scattered limbs of our ancient and late navigations by sea.” He declared geography and chronology to be the sun and moon, the right eye and the left, of all history.
When Hakluyt died, on the 23rd November, 1616, he was Archdeacon of Westminster and had reached his sixty-fourth year. He left a large collection of materials which came into the hands of the Rev. Samuel Purchas, who, in due course, published Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes, an invaluable work, though marred by injudicious curtailments and omissions. To the student of Arctic history the works of Hakluyt are indispensable. In them are to be found the journals and narratives, or all that could be saved of them, between the date of the earliest English voyages, and that of Hakluyt’s death.