1. Pietas Patriae and Poetic Instruction

Before the Protestant Reformation fully erupted into the political arena, Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) made the following observation about pietas patriae, pietistic conceits used in the name of national interest: “In France, they preach that God is on the side of the French, and he who has God as his protector cannot be vanquished. In England and Spain, they preach that this war is waged, not by the king, but by God; [therefore] victory is certain, if only they show themselves to be courageous. . . . What can feigned religion not achieve?”Footnote ¹

As a scholar well versed in classical culture, Erasmus knew that in both ancient and modern times the ideas of piety and probity are raised less upon truth than upon a store of familiar gestures: dramatic and rhetorical topoi that lend moral justification to political pursuits by intoning conceits so well known that everyone is wont to accept them as true. This postulate from the art of forensic discourse was commonplace among Renaissance humanists and still held sway in the time of Karl Marx, who writes at the start of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852):

Such insights can be traced to Aristotle, who explains that persuasion has more to do with the appearance of virtue than with sincerity or morality per se, insofar as it is the strength of character projected in one's rhetoric — especially by the conspicuous use of maxims and precepts — that stirs the emotions of the public.Footnote ³ And of course, as Aristotle and Marx both knew, nothing stirs the emotions as much as patriotic discourse.

Early modern authorities nevertheless disdained the indiscriminate and hypocritical use of pietas patriae. They contended that by draping political pretensions in the discourse of piety a writer also assumed the obligation to uphold the moral and spiritual ideals that he — however selfishly — professed. The departure from empirical truth that Aristotle condoned for the sake of expediency was accordingly recast in the sixteenth century as an instrument of effective, and especially Christian, instruction, inspiring Philip Sidney's (1554–86) claim that poetry — the term commonly used for fiction in the Aristotelian idiom of the time — surpasses both history and philosophy, “not onely in furnishing the minde with knowledge, but in setting it forward to that which deserues to be called and accounted good. . . . For as the Image of each Action stirreth and instructeth the minde, so the loftie Image of such woorthies, moste enflameth the minde with desire to bee woorthie: and enforms with counsaile how to bee woorthie.”Footnote ⁴

This idea that historical writing need at times privilege moral truth over empirical fact was endorsed by authors on both sides of the Reformation, from Sidney and Edmund Spenser (1552–99) in England to Torquato Tasso (1544–95) in Italy; Jacques Amyot (1513–93), Jean Bodin (1530–96), and Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) in France; and Jerónimo de San José (1587–1654) in Spain. In a slightly earlier age, Fernando del Pulgar (ca. 1436–92), as royal chronicler to Isabel I of Castile (1451–1504), was not only alert to the political uses of historical writing but also forthright in defense of the liberties to which he believed historians are entitled in the name of higher truth, stating that he himself strove to “emulate Titus Livy and other ancient historians, who greatly beautify their chronicles with explanations draped in much philosophy and good doctrine. For we have license to amplify these explanations, adorning them with the best and most efficacious words and arguments that we can, taking care not to depart from the substance of what was actually done.”Footnote ⁵ The use of artistic devices to facilitate moral and spiritual instruction assimilated the practice of history to poetry.Footnote ⁶ As Sidney explains, poetry conjoins particular examples to the abstract precepts of philosophy to form a “perfect picture” of what ought to be done, so that others might then be inspired to do it.Footnote ⁷

2. Elizabethan Patriotism and the Lessons of Spain

In this essay, I examine the didactic intent of sixteenth-century writings that critics, thinking about the empire that England would later become and the values that it would later profess, typically construe as unalloyed propaganda for Protestant England in its rivalry with Catholic Spain. While it is true that animosity toward Catholicism and Spain was used to refashion English national identity starting with the reign (1558–1603) of Elizabeth I, the works that drew upon this animosity to encourage mercantile and colonial endeavor were far from Manichean in their assessments of the demerits and virtues of Spain and England. So, too, did they avoid the moral exceptionalism that flowered in the mid-seventeenth century. Because these sixteenth-century works foregrounded moral and spiritual ideals that not only eclipsed immediate political and economic interests but also transcended sectarian difference — insofar as they were esteemed by Protestants and Catholics alike — criticism of Spain was also, if not foremost, an admonition to England, especially in the pursuit of conquests that had not yet been attempted, but were foretold to merit glory and God's favor.Footnote ⁸ Such is the nature of pietas patriae, and the “poetical” history endorsed by Sidney and his peers.Footnote ⁹

It is nevertheless now commonplace to assert that authors such as Richard Hakluyt were so moved by disdain for Catholic Spain that they made the promotion of this prejudice an objective of their historical works. Claims to this effect are often made without documentation because the prejudice of Hakluyt and others is taken for granted.Footnote ¹⁰ While it is true, as Sidney wrote in a letter of 21 July 1584, that Hakluyt “hath served for a very good Trumpet” for the colonial projects of Humphrey Gilbert (1539–83) and others,Footnote ¹¹ the idea of politico-sectarian conflict sometimes attributed to this phrase is complicated by other authorial motives, in part philosophical — as the recent studies by David Armitage and Andrew Fitzmaurice show — and in part spiritual, as I argue in the present essay.Footnote ¹² The changes introduced into the texts that Hakluyt published are particularly revealing of an intent, of values, and of an openmindedness that surpass narrowly nationalistic concerns.

Although often tacit, the teleology of the studies that unduly restrict their attention to what one of them calls “strictly patriotic and pragmatic motivations”Footnote ¹³ assumes that Hakluyt, foremost among his peers, not only wrote and compiled works with the intent to create an imperial project, but was moreover the prophet, indeed the architect, of the English Empire that later took shape.Footnote ¹⁴ Apart from the different concept of empire operative in Hakluyt's time, this myopic reading of Elizabethan texts on exploration and colonization is problematic, in that patriotic conceits, such as the claim to God's favor and protection, were used in a more complex and circumspect way: as an encouragement and a corrective to national endeavor, and as a yardstick against which to measure what was actually done.Footnote ¹⁵ This is not to say that these works were objective or dispassionate, but instead that, insofar as they were partisan, their judgments were nonetheless rooted in transcendent principles of morality, justice, and virtue.Footnote ¹⁶ Accordingly, although these works did seek to promote the discovery and settlement of new lands — and commercial activity in general — we should not assume that their understandings of the responsibilities, objectives, conduct, and value of this undertaking was necessarily consonant with later schemes of English nationalism or with the ways in which their ideal proposals were realized. As we shall see, it is indeed likely that Hakluyt and others of his generation who endorsed colonial ventures would have found as much to fault in England's future conquests as they did in those of its rivals Spain, Portugal, and France. Triumphalist rhetoric and the censure of others were double-edged swords that reminded any who would listen that God's Providence is not without conditions.

In 1625, when anti-Catholic, antipapal, and anti-Spanish fervor gripped England and Samuel Purchas (1577–1626) republished the Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias (1552) by Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566)Footnote ¹⁷ — using the 1583 translation of this work that would be used to create Spain's Black Legend as a guide — Purchas felt it important not only to cleanse the text of “many many [sic] inuectives and bitter Epithetes,” but also to proclaim that his purpose was not to condemn Spain or Catholicism in general, given that the acts in question were “excesses committed by some Spaniards” — that is, by individual Spaniards and not by the Spanish nation as a whole.Footnote ¹⁸ Instead, like Las Casas, Purchas wished to make clear that the real culprit was the departure from Christian virtue itself, here seen in the neglect or abandonment — Purchas uses the word alteration — of the ideals that once guided Spain in the foundation of its American colonies.Footnote ¹⁹

Purchas was not alone in this understanding of Las Casas's text and the lessons that it held for English and Protestant readers. The preface to the reader in the anonymous 1583 English edition indeed follows the French translation of Jacques de Miggrode (published in Antwerp in 1579), not only in condemning the evil wrought by Spaniards in America, but also in stating that “two reasons haue moued me to publish this preface.”Footnote ²⁰ Here the English text deviates slightly, yet significantly, from the French: whereas the latter is addressed “to all the provinces of the Low Countries,” the English is instead dedicated to them, thus opening its message to the concerns of a broader readership that was less directly menaced by Spanish aggression.Footnote ²¹ In both texts, the two reasons for publishing the preface are as follows: “The one, to the end [that], awakening thẽselues out of their sleep, [all] may begin to thinke vpon Gods iudgements: and refraine from their wickednes and vice. The other, that they may also consider with what enemie they are to deale, and so beholde as it were in a picture or table, what stay they are like to bee at, when through their rechlesnesse, quarrels, controuersies, and partialities themselues haue opened the way to such an enemie: and what they may looke for.”Footnote ²²

Clearly, the enemy with which “they are to deale” that is conjured up in the English text is less explicitly Spain than in the text that Miggrode intended for his readers in the Netherlands. The English text indeed asks its public to refrain from wickedness in addition to vice, and, in listing the causes of domestic strife, replaces nonchalance with the more morally charged term recklessness. Nevertheless, instead of merely chastising others, both prologues call for introspection and self-reform. As a result, when they afterward turn to the use of pietas patriae, it comes as no surprise that they both insist that any nation that lays claim to God's favor, in consideration of the sins of its enemies, should first take stock of its own conduct: “Most mẽ do ground their opinion vpon the goodnesse of their cause, concluding, that in as much as God is iust, he will graunt victorie to the right, and will ouerthrowe the wicked. . . . [I]t is certaine that wee are not thereby to iudge that our selues shall haue victorie ouer our enemies, because our cause is the better, for we are replenished with vice enough, whereby to leaue vnto god sufficient matter to punishe vs.”Footnote ²³

Still more explicit in its awareness of growing prejudice against Catholicism among Englishmen and in its insistence that spiritual interests need take precedence over religious and political gain is Abraham Hartwell the Younger's (b. ca. 1533) preface in his translation of Filippo Pigafetta's (1533–1604) Reporte of the Kingdome of Congo, made at the request of Richard Hakluyt and published in 1597. Citing the exception that readers might take to reports of conversions at the hands of Portuguese priests, Hartwell concedes that these occurred “with all pompe and solemnitie, after the Romish maner.” Nevertheless, he adds:

Along the same lines, even in the context of Hakluyt's promotion of an undertaking explicitly imagined “to spoile Phillipps Indian navye, and to deprive him of yerely passage of his Treasure into Europe, and consequently to abate the pride of Spaine . . . and to pull him downe in equallitie to his neighbour princes,” there is much more than a simple dichotomy between boosterism for England, on one hand, and denigration of Spain, on the other.Footnote ²⁵ As in his other works, Hakluyt subscribes to a single standard of religious duty in his Discourse of Western Planting (1584), imposing it equally upon England and Spain.

It is thus not by chance that when Hakluyt arrives at the profit promised to England in the full title of his Discourse on Western Planting he not only reminds his queen of the evangelical work that her nation has thus far failed even to attempt, much less accomplish, but also lauds the example set by Spain in its first discoveries:

It would be easy to dismiss this statement as solely a goad to England's pride, were this the only occasion on which Hakluyt, in addressing an English authority, adduces the myth that Isabel I of Castile pawned her jewels to finance Columbus's first voyage, thereby bringing profit to her country and salvation to many pagans in America. This paradigm recurs, with the same examples, in Hakluyt's dedication to Walter Ralegh (1554–1618) of his translation (1587) into English of René Goulaine de Laudonnière's L'Histoire notable de la Floride — which calls, moreover, for England to follow “the course that both the Spaniards and Portugals tooke in the beginnings of their discoueries and conquestes”Footnote ²⁷ — and again in Hakluyt's address (24 October 1599) to then principal secretary Sir Robert Cecil (1563–1612) at the start of volume 2 of the second edition of the Principal Navigations (1598–1600).Footnote ²⁸ The parallel that Hakluyt draws between Elizabeth of England and Isabel of Castile — taking the latter alone, rather than with her husband and coregent, Ferdinand of Aragon — is not in the least subtle. Similarly clear is the assurance that God will favor Elizabeth and England, as he did Isabel and Castile, providing that Elizabeth, too, assume her Christian duty.

One must ask, however, why Hakluyt would make this particular comparison even in the course of criticizing the present state of political affairs, in which, as he states in his Discourse of Western Planting, Spaniards are “so puffed vpp and inflamed with pride . . . that they are growen to this highe conceite of themselues that they shall shortly attaine to be Lordes and onely seigniors of all the earthe.”Footnote ²⁹ For, indeed, even as Hakluyt contests the legitimacy of Pope Alexander VI's donation of the Indies to Castile in 1493, he states:

Clearly, Hakluyt did not subscribe to a Manichean worldview in which right and wrong are coequal with English Protestantism and Spanish Catholicism, for the mission that he here ascribes to Spain is identical to that which he recommends to England. His interests were not simply or narrowly nationalistic but instead also philosophical and spiritual, as David Harris Sacks lucidly explains in regard to Hakluyt's views on Spain, papal power, and foreign policy.Footnote ³¹ In these, and in Hakluyt's call for overseas exploration and colonization, one finds a coherent set of ideals rooted in Christian and classical thought.

3. The Spiritual and Moral Underpinnings of Writings on European Expansion

Much has come from seeking the origins of English imperialism and modern English prose in the writings of Hakluyt and his contemporaries. However, we need to look as well to the beliefs that gave birth to these writings if we are to understand what it was that Englishmen of Hakluyt's time aspired to achieve.Footnote ³² Instead of again projecting the tenets of a later conception of English nationalism back upon them, we must examine how and why, despite the novelties brought to light by recent exploration, they sought to give authority to their proposals by raising them upon traditional and broadly Christian values. Critics today regularly quote James A. Froude's assertion in 1852 that Hakluyt's Principal Navigations “may be called the Prose Epic of the modern English nation,” yet they disregard that this follows from his claim that “an intensely real conviction of the divine and devilish forces by which the universe was guided and misguided, was the inheritance of the Elizabethan age from Catholic Christianity,” and that, accordingly, the writings even of common sailors speak to “a moral education which most brought out what was most nobly human in them . . . a real intelligible language in which they heard the Almighty God speaking to them.”Footnote ³³ When the moral and spiritual concerns of sixteenth-century works on naval history and the settlement of new lands are set aside in favor of the secular ideology of a later time in which, as David B. Quinn notes, “the atmosphere for this became more favourable as concepts of free trade and laissez-faire became more general,” it is easy to construe the advice put forth in these works as referring to economic and political pursuits alone.Footnote ³⁴

Such is the deficiency of the meaning that critics today accord to key terms such as commerce and commodity, which Hakluyt and his circle conceptualized, not as instruments of self- and national enrichment alone, but more broadly as means to facilitate the harmony and rapprochement of nations, and the salvation of all men via Christianity. In this, they followed the teachings of Aristotle and his Christian commentators,Footnote ³⁵ conjoining them to scriptural passages on the brotherhood and interdependence — or “mutuall Necessitie, the Mother of mutuall Commerce,” as Purchas called it — of the peoples scattered over the face of the earth.Footnote ³⁶ Asserting that “it is lawful for any nation to go to any other and to trade with it,” Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) writes, for instance, in Hakluyt's English translation of his Mare Liberum (1609): “God himself speaketh this in nature, seeing he will not have all those things, whereof the life of man standeth in need, to be sufficiently ministered by nature in all places and also vouchsafeth some nations to excel others in arts. To what end are these things but that he would maintain human friendship by their mutual wants and plenty, lest everyone thinking themselves sufficient for themselves for this only thing should be made insociable? Now it cometh to pass that one nation should supply the other by the appointment of divine justice.”Footnote ³⁷ Hakluyt's dedication to Francis Walsingham (ca. 1530–90) in the 1589 edition of the Principall Navigations similarly makes clear that the “commerce & traffike” anticipated to result from relations between England and the nations of the Far East will be profitable, not only in financial and scientific, or ethnographic, terms — “informing vs of the state of their Easterne habitations” — but moreover and seemingly principally for the spread of religion: “For mine owne parte, I take it as a pledge of Gods further fauour both vnto vs and them: to them especially, vnto whose doores I doubt not in time shalbe by vs caried the incomparable treasure of the trueth of Christianity, and of the gospell, while we vse and exercise common trade with their marchants.”Footnote ³⁸

Similarly restrictive is the interpretation commonly given to Hakluyt's activity as a collector, translator, and editor of voyages carried out by others and of diverse documents, including letters, patents, contracts, logs, rosters, inventories, and maps relating to the emerging world beyond Europe's borders. Scholars have come to describe such behind-the-scenes endeavor as a modern form of agency with a gravity of its own.Footnote ³⁹ Yet one can discern the influence still exerted upon modern analyses by early pundits such as Thomas Fuller (1608–61), who wrote this about Hakluyt's Principal Navigations in his History of the Worthies of England (1662): “[M]any of such useful Tracts of Sea Adventures, which before were scattered as several Ships, Mr. Hackluit hath imbodied into a Fleet, divided into three Squadrons, so many several Volumes. A work of great honour to England, it being possible that many Ports and Islands in America which being base and barren, bear only a bare name for the present, may prove rich places for the future. And then these Voyages will be produced and pleaded, as, good Evidence of their belonging to England, as first discovered and denominated by English-men.”Footnote ⁴⁰

In addition to assigning Hakluyt the patriotic glory of bringing honor to England by documenting the discoveries made by its denizens, Thomas Fuller casts Hakluyt's editorial work in the guise of marshaling or “embodying” a fleet from scattered ships or texts. To modern readers, this is a secular task, seemingly reiterated by Hakluyt himself in the preface to the reader in volume 1 (1598) of the second edition of the Principal Navigations: “Hauing for the benefit and honour of my Countrey zealously bestowed so many yeres, so much traueile and cost, to bring Antiquities smothered and buried in darke silence, to light, and to preserue certaine memorable exploits of late yeeres by our English nation atchieued, from the greedy and deuouring iawes of obliuion: to gather likewise, and as it were to incorporate into one body the torne and scattered limmes of our ancient and late Nauigations by Sea, our voyages by land, and traffiques of merchandise by both: and hauing (so much as in me lieth) restored ech particular member, being before displaced, to their true ioynts and ligaments . . . I do this second time . . . presume to offer vnto thy view this first part of my threefold discourse.”Footnote ⁴¹ It is evident that Fuller drew inspiration for his biographical entry from this statement. So, too, can one comprehend why, among more recent critics, Mary C. Fuller would conclude that Hakluyt sought to reveal “the bodily or physical form” of the world, and also to fashion “something like a recomposed memory, precisely, the memory of a national[ist] history: the shape of that heroic national story forgotten, dis[re]membered and buried by the present.” Or indeed, “to suppose from the scattered bodies of voyagers, merchants, and colonists the prior heroic body of a lost and glorious past.”Footnote ⁴² This is possible, yet readers of Hakluyt's time would undoubtedly have interpreted his words very differently, viewing the “body” in the making to be that, not of English history, but instead of the unity, fellowship, knowledge, harmony, and civility lost in the biblical Fall, and now brought again to light by God's Providence, as suggested by the pointed use of terms such as revocare (to call back), reducere (to lead back), and recupere (to recover) by Hakluyt and his contemporaries.Footnote ⁴³

It is in light of this eschatological paradigm that Hakluyt lauds the achievements of his fellow historian Pietro Martire d'Anghiera (1457–1526) and of the Spanish explorers whose acts he chronicled. Hakluyt writes in the dedication to Walter Ralegh of his Latin edition of Pietro Martire's De Orbe Nouo decades: “He narrates the actions performed, neither disjointedly, as do most others, nor, like most, in a language unknown to educated men, nor starkly and coldly. Instead, with a glorious and skilled pen, he very ingeniously depicts the head, neck, breast, arms, and, indeed, the entire body of that immense America in vivid colors, drapes it very decently in the Latin garb familiar to scholars, and, whenever the matter itself requires, probes the underlying causes of things, inquires into the hidden effects of nature, and draws conclusions from the inner recesses of obscure philosophy.”Footnote ⁴⁴

Charting the course followed in his own editorial endeavor, Hakluyt first praises Pietro Martire's even-handedness in presenting both the virtues and vices of the men about whom he wrote, whatever their nationality and faith,Footnote ⁴⁵ and then explains how, even in reading about the deeds of other nations, Englishmen can “be moved to a like emulation of boldness; for he who tenders the praises of foreigners stirs up his own people, if they are not lifeless.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Then, addressing Ralegh directly, Hakluyt recommends that Ralegh too hold to “the one and only principle by which first the Portuguese, and then the Castilians, yearning with all their spirits, at last accomplished what they had so many times before attempted at no small cost.”Footnote ⁴⁷ This unspecified “what” is clearly not uniquely commercial or political, for Hakluyt does not mention any sort of merchandise whatsoever. Instead, he concludes with yet another paean to the knowledge and the salvation of souls expected to result from new discoveries:

In the same vein, early modern poets such as Michael Drayton (1563–1631) follow scripture and the precedent set by early works on European expansion to see the increase in tandem of empire, faith, and civility as a Christian project:

• A thousand kingdoms will we seeke from farre,

• As many Nations wast[e] with ciuill warre,

• Where the disheuel'd gastly Sea-nymphe sings,

• O[u]r well-rigd shyps shall stretch theyr swelling wings,

• And dragge theyr Ankors through the sandie foame,

• About the world in euery Clime to roame,

• And those vnchristned Countries call our owne,

• Where scarce the name of England hath been knowneFootnote ⁴⁹

Drayton's imagery is wrongly interpreted as the expression of economic and political interests alone by critics such as Walter Alexander Raleigh (1861–1922), who, citing these verses, avers that the mission of those who sailed from England under Elizabeth “was quite unlike his ‘that bringeth the message from the mountain’; they coveted the things of the Gentiles, and their purpose and methods are set forth in imperial language.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Raleigh dismissively says that “[t]he late Mr. Froude, with a poet's instinct for unity, chose to regard the whole story of the English Voyages as an aspect of the Protestant Reformation.” Yet as a historian Raleigh is equally quick to simplify, asserting that “[t]he history of the English Voyages is the most important chapter in the history of the English nation, and the preface to the history of the British Empire.”Footnote ⁵¹ Between Froude and Raleigh, we have the two motives — the spirit of Protestantism and the aspiration to empire — conventionally cited by proponents of the teleological explanation of early modern English culture, that is, by proponents of the idea that the imperial ideals of later times also motivated the changes that took place in the Elizabethan era, which these later times therefore appointed as their own point of origin.

Even as the discourse of piety awakened patriotic sentiment on both sides of the rift between Protestants in England and Catholics in Spain, it also reminded both publics of the spiritual ideals to which they and all Christians need to conform in order to be worthy of divine favor. For this, because authors in England and Spain drew upon a common stock of classical and scriptural authorities to urge their countrymen to action, the brand of pietas patriae in their works was far from mere chauvinism. Beneath a veneer of partisan rhetoric, good and evil were cast in spiritual, and not solely religious or political, terms; the qualities that make one a good Christian span the divide between Protestants and Catholics, and are incumbent upon both. Hence, contempt for Spain in the writings of Hakluyt and his generation is rooted, not in the evils of Catholicism, but instead in the neglect of the ecumenical ideals that once brought God's Providence to Spain, and that might win it for England in the future. History must be framed in these higher values if it is to fulfill its calling as a didactic, and not merely nationalistic or documentary, medium, as was the aspiration of these typically humanist authors.

4. The Instructive History of Richard Hakluyt, Preacher

Hakluyt's religious education and clerical appointments are reasonably well documented, from his first studies at Oxford in the 1570s and ordination before the end of the decade to his positions at Christ Church (21 December 1580); as prebendary of Bristol Cathedral (29 September 1586); as rector of Wetheringsett (20 April 1590); as chaplain to the Hospital of the Savoy in London (23 November 1599); and as prebendary (4 May 1602), archdeacon (3 December 1603), steward (29 September 1608), and finally treasurer (6 December 1614) of Westminster Abbey.Footnote ⁵² He also had a number of sinecures in which he performed both spiritual and political service, notably as chaplain (1583–88) to Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris, Sir Edward Stafford of Grafton (ca. 1552–1604), and, at the end of the century, to her secretary Sir Robert Cecil.Footnote ⁵³ The royal warrant of 24 November 1606 that gave Hakluyt “full and free license” to go to Virginia to “make a plantation and lead forth a colony,” explicitly declares that his role was spiritual.Footnote ⁵⁴

Ecclesiastical duty was thus a constant in Hakluyt's life; however, with few exceptions critics have been quick to dismiss it as merely a means to make a living, stating, for example, that this “was almost the only course open to a man of no private fortune who wished to devote his life to scholarship.”Footnote ⁵⁵ In the same vein, other critics aver that religion “shaped little, if any, of Hakluyt's corpus,” and that in Hakluyt's works evangelism was “a convenient and conventionally admired motive for exploration, though the reader senses that [Hakluyt's] actual motives lie elsewhere.”Footnote ⁵⁶ It is telling that, whereas The Hakluyt Handbook has chapters on Hakluyt's view of British history, on his activity as geographer and translator, on the connections between his colonial theories and the economic thought of his time, on his maps, on his use of language and nautical terms, and finally on his reputation, there is no corresponding chapter — indeed next to nothing at all — on Hakluyt and religion. This inattention is occasioned by two suppositions: first, that Hakluyt's editorial work was directed to an economic end alone — or perhaps an economic end in concert with sociopolitical concerns such as increasing the honor of his nation abroad and curbing delinquency and idleness at homeFootnote ⁵⁷ — since his collections consist largely of documents pertaining to voyages made by merchant societies; and second, by an assumption that sixteenth-century English Protestantism made a radical break with the traditions of unreformed Christianity and classical thought.Footnote ⁵⁸

In this light, one may ask why Hakluyt would sign the dedications of all three parts of the Principal Navigations with the phrase “Richard Hakluyt preacher.”Footnote ⁵⁹ While he occasionally used this and analogous titles in private correspondence, they do not figure in any publications but the Principal Navigations and Virginia richly valued (1609), whose exhortation to the Virginia Company is signed “By one publikely and anciently deuoted to Gods seruice, and all yours in this so good action, Richard Hakluyt.”Footnote ⁶⁰ We might also wonder why the statement “Translated out of Spanish by Richard Hakluyt preacher,” written prominently in Hakluyt's hand on the original English version of Admiral Álvaro Baçán's plans for the defense of Spain's American colonies, was omitted when the revised text of this work was issued in the Principal Navigations.Footnote ⁶¹ Similarly puzzling is the question of why, when Hakluyt was obliged to withdraw the original title page (dated 1598) of volume 1 of the second edition of the Principal Navigations, he chose to replace the words (recycled from the first edition of 1589) “By Richard Haklvyt Master of Arts, and sometime Student of Christ-Church in Oxford” with “By Richard Haklvyt Preacher, and sometime Student of Christ-Church in Oxford.”Footnote ⁶² Why might it have been appropriate for Hakluyt to sign these collections that bear upon the exploration and settlement of new lands with an ecclesiastical title, and yet avoid the correlation of spiritual duty and political service in explicitly partisan documents such as his translation of Baçán, which is not by accident set amid a series of texts on England's hostilities with Spain, starting with “A summarie and true discourse of sir Francis Drakes West Indian voyage, begun in the yeere 1585. Wherein were taken the cities of Saint Iago, Santo Domingo, Cartagena, and the towne of Saint Augustine in Florida”?

One may venture an answer by examining the intent of the two literally out-of-place texts with which Hakluyt ends part 1 of the Principal Navigations in the second edition. Although this volume was to include reports only on voyages to the north and east of England in Scandinavia and Russia, these two narratives are instead set in the familiar waters of England and Spain. The events chronicled in them are from recent years (1588 and 1596), and thus also familiar to the reader. Whereas Hakluyt pointedly excludes such local exploits from the first edition of the Principal Navigations as “things distinct and without the compasse of my prescribed limites, beyng neither of remote length and spaciousnesse, neither of search and discouerie of strange coasts” — while still affirming their worth through praeteritio Footnote ⁶³ — the revised and expanded second edition instead calls attention to their presence, ending the original title page from 1598 with the words “And lastly, the memorable defeate of the Spanish huge Armada, Anno 1588. and the famous victorie atchieued at the citie of Cadiz, 1596. are described.”Footnote ⁶⁴

This advertisement and the report of the attack on Cádiz were suppressed when volume 1 of the Principal Navigations was reissued along with volume 2 and a single title page in 1599. This suppression has typically been seen as politically motivated, due to the fall from grace of Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex (1565–1601), whose heroism and guidance as co-commander of the expeditionary force are honored in these pages. Indeed, a number of particularly influential critics have gone so far as to allege that the queen herself ordered that all references to the victory in Cádiz, and hence to Essex's success, be excised to quiet “public attestations as to the Earl's popularity.”Footnote ⁶⁵ Despite a seemingly similar effort by the queen and privy council to quash the rehabilitation of Ralegh, another fallen hero of Cádiz, by banning reports favorable to him,Footnote ⁶⁶ the supposition of royal censorship of the Principal Navigations has been challenged by Anthony Payne, who, in a carefully documented study of the production and dissemination of Hakluyt's works, notes that the excised leaves were possibly “available under the counter” (something implausible were the political climate of the time as desperate as often assumed), and that, in any event, “the political chronology of the Earl's decline cannot be readily reconciled with the date of the book's publication.” As a result, the claim that Essex's fall led to the censorship of Hakluyt's volume in 1599 “is to read back into that year the events leading to his rebellion and execution in 1601.” A better explanation, for Payne, is that Hakluyt voluntarily withdrew the Cádiz leaves and title page “out of deference to his patron [Sir Robert Cecil], because the shifting emphasis in foreign policy made politic a distancing from the Cádiz raid and the bellicose anti-Spanish stance it represented.”Footnote ⁶⁷ This argument against censorship aimed exclusively at Essex is well conceived, especially because it takes into account the nature of the text at issue. As Payne observes, volume 1 of the Principal Navigations is dedicated to the Lord Admiral Charles Howard of Effingham (1536–1624), the other co-commander of the Cádiz flotilla, and, contrary to the practice of recent critics, “it is difficult to read the Cadiz narrative itself as overtly partisan. . . . Indeed partisanship seems not to have occurred to Hakluyt at all.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Payne's textual evidence bears out this assertion; yet, like the analyses he questions, his explanation of the forces at play is grounded in personal and political rivalries, rather than broader moral and literary interests, that is, the meaning that the inclusion of this work on England's victory in Cádiz may have had for Hakluyt and the reader of his collection as a whole.

Hakluyt indeed takes care to insist that, although England prevailed in 1588 against the Armada, and again in 1596 in the sack of Cádiz, this was because of divine Providence, and not as a result of its own might. The preface to the reader published in both the 1598 and 1599 issues demands that these events be read as a lesson to all Christians and justifies their inclusion at this point in Hakluyt's work as an epiphonema, or dramatic summation of the ideas and tenets at issue in the preceding pages — that is, in the reports of travel, exploration, commerce and, more generally, exchanges and relations between peoples and nations with which Hakluyt proposes to educate the reader. Indeed, in contrast to these other works that some scholars — focusing myopically on the material dimension of “those long and dull lists of unknown names, of merchant promoters, gentleman adventurers, intending colonists, and ship's companies, which give so business-like an air to Hakluyt's pages”Footnote ⁶⁹ — have seen to furnish merely practical knowledge in an essentially objective way,Footnote ⁷⁰ the final two texts of volume 1 stand out as moral instruction, as Hakluyt himself proclaims:

Beyond the rhetoric expected in a work comprising “rare, delightfull and profitable histories,”Footnote ⁷² remarks such as these are particularly useful in defining the author's intent and perspective. Hakluyt's belief in history as an instructive medium is evident, as is the role of faith and especially Providence in noble and honorable actions. While the same convictions are conspicuous in the two accounts with which the first volume of journeys is brought to a close, few readers are aware that Hakluyt did not merely edit, but in part rewrote, these two documents.Footnote ⁷³ This is not to say that the original authors saw matters in a different light, but instead that Hakluyt undertook to enhance what was already present in their works in order to ensure their value, not only as “fearefull spectacles and examples of [God's] iudgements vnto all Christendome,” but also as an epiphonema, an explicit and sententious rendition of truths perhaps left unspoken by the original authors. To judge by the usage of the rhetorical term epiphonema in the late sixteenth century — a term apparently so uncommon that it was glossed by the synonyms acclamation, conclusion, and exclamation in almost all other works of the time, which were, moreover, primarily of a religious bent — it would seem that it was the moral value of these truths that concerned Hakluyt. For, in his preface and the writings to follow he adheres to the definition by Richard Sherry (ca. 1506–ca. 1555), the second earliest use of the term in English that I have been able to document: “Epiphonema, is an acclamation of any matter that is tolde, or alowed: that is to say, an amplifying of honestie, dignitie, profite, difficultie, or suche other like, put at the ende for the more meruelling.”Footnote ⁷⁴

Here and throughout Hakluyt's collection, the accounts offered to the reader are not only rich in practical information (itineraries, lists of personnel and provisions, dates, place names, etc.), but also mindful of the moral and spiritual dimensions of colonization, warfare, and commerce in all its senses. This is not to say that the examples contained in these texts are always positive, but rather that events, good or bad, are framed within a Christian economy more than a secular one. Neglect of these higher concerns has led critics such as John Parker to ascribe such a diverse body of texts to “either Hakluyt's rather indiscriminate gathering of material or great breadth of purpose.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Despite the words “of the English Nation” in the title, Hakluyt also includes reports written by Catholic authors of other nations, “where our owne mens experience is defectiue.”Footnote ⁷⁶ The passages taken from these texts are less sectarian than informed by a humanistic and ecumenical strain of Christianity, which justifies Hakluyt's claim for them as “the best and chiefest relations of strangers.”Footnote ⁷⁷ The same may be said of Hakluyt's choice of English and Protestant writers. A case in point is the Historia Belgica nostri potissimum temporis ad annum vsque 1598 (History of the Low Countries, above all of our times till the year 1598) by Emanuel van Meteren (1535–1612), which Hakluyt translates for his account of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. For while Van Meteren (who lived his adult years in London, beyond the reach of the government at home) loudly condemns the injustice of Spain's rule in the Netherlands, his story of the Armada also underscores the restrained and spiritual — that is, Christian — response of those, both Protestant and Catholic, who aspire to conciliation in their words and deeds. As a result, whereas others would draw on Van Meteren's Historia Belgica to celebrate “martiall actions,” in Hakluyt's edition one instead finds the power of piety and devotion to God.Footnote ⁷⁸

It would appear that Hakluyt had at his disposal an advance copy of the supposedly unauthorized Latin translation of Van Meteren's history — released in Cologne in 1598, the year that volume 1 of the Principal Navigations was published, with Hakluyt's translation, in London — for wherever the original text presumes to show — and moreover explain and laud — the benefits of prayer, thanksgiving, humility, and collective observance, Hakluyt follows it to the letter, something that he does not always do with more matter-of-fact passages. Since Van Meteren was in England during the events in question, the differences between his portraits of the Netherlands and of England after the Armada's defeat are especially poignant, and it is here that the epiphonema promised by Hakluyt occurs. For whereas the Dutch celebrate the Armada's destruction “according to the custome of the ancient Romans,” with a token nod to religion in the mottos stamped on coins and memorabilia,Footnote ⁷⁹ more pious displays are seen in England among both Catholics and Protestants:

As a result of this deposition, although we are informed that in England as well the queen, “imitating the ancient Romans, rode into London in triumph, in regard of her owne and her subjects glorious deliuerance,” and that, along the entire route, “the ensignes and colours of the vanquished Spaniards hung displayed. And all the Citizens of London in their Liueries stood on either side the street . . . which, together with the foresayd banners, yeelded a very stately and gallant prospect,” these patriotic gestures promptly cede to spiritual observance alone, and it is for this that Elizabeth is acclaimed in Hakluyt's history: “Her Maiestie being entered into the Church, together with her Clergie and Nobles gaue thanks vnto God, and caused a publike Sermon to be preached before her at Pauls crosse; wherein none other argument was handled, but that praise, honour, and glory might be rendered vnto God, and that Gods name might be extolled by thanksgiuing. And with her owne princely voice she most Christianly exhorted the people to doe the same: wherevpon the people with a loud acclamation wished her a most long and happy life, to the confusion of her foes.”Footnote ⁸¹

Finally, lest we miss the point that Spain's divinely ordained defeat should be taken less as satisfaction of English pride than as an admonishment to how England ought to conduct itself in its own affairs, Hakluyt ends the section on the Armada with a brief Latin poem by Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605), “Ad serenissimam Elizabetham Angliæ reginam,” whose far longer and explicitly didactic English translation, also included by Hakluyt, builds to the statement:

• Well hath the Sea with greedie gulfs vnknowen,

• Deuoured the deuourer to his smart:

• And made his ships a pray vnto the sand,

• That meant to pray vpon anothers land.

• And now, O Queene, aboue all others blest,

• For whom both windes and waues are prest to fight,

• So rule your owne, so succour friends opprest,

• (As farre from pride, as ready to do right)

• That England you, you England long enioy,

• No lesse your friends delight, then foes annoy.Footnote ⁸²

The ideal of Christian comportment set forth in these lines also informs the “Briefe and true report of the Honorable voyage vnto Cadiz, 1596,” with which Hakluyt concludes volume 1 of the Principal Navigations. As explained above, the suppression of this work is commonly ascribed to compliance with a ban on texts favorable to the Earl of Essex, yet it is possible that this report in particular might have been perceived as a challenge or even a rebuke to the crown, insofar as it presumes to teach a lesson on the necessity of harmony, restraint, mercy, openness, and conciliation in public affairs. If Essex personifies defiance to royal authority, the “Briefe and true report of the Honorable voyage vnto Cadiz, 1596” elucidates the limits of temporal power in general, and the subordination of all nations and peoples to the will of God. As a result, although the text does celebrate England's victory and the heroism of its queen and commanders, its aim is less to record their actual deeds than to project the moral demeanor expected of anyone who would aspire to Providence.

This “amplifying of honestie, dignitie, profite, difficultie, or suche other like . . . for the more meruelling,” to use Sherry's phrase, sets the “Briefe and true report of the Honorable voyage vnto Cadiz, 1596” apart from other texts about the expedition, in which the principal players sought to advance their particular interests. Even before their return to England, Essex, Howard, and Ralegh each had reports acclaiming their bravery, service, and decisions delivered to the queen or other influential figures.Footnote ⁸³ Whereas these works aspired to influence the division of spoils and the strategy to be used against Spain,Footnote ⁸⁴ the “Briefe and true report of the Honorable voyage vnto Cadiz, 1596” instead uses England's triumph as a backdrop for a tale about Christian comportment, which, unlike the feats of daring found in other accounts, might be taken up by readers at large. As we shall see, the editorial changes made by Hakluyt effaced many of the dramatic gestures with which other writers sought to memorialize the habits and character of their heroes.Footnote ⁸⁵ England's victory would in this way become the result of consentaneity, and of a single yet collective mode of action.

The following passage reveals this higher purpose of the “Briefe and true report of the Honorable voyage vnto Cadiz, 1596.” For while contemporaneous texts from both England and Spain concur in praising the discipline and restraint, if not also the moral virtues and courtesy, of the occupying army,Footnote ⁸⁶ in the work edited by Hakluyt, as in volume 1 of the Principal Navigations as a whole, the main action, England's honorable voyage, is followed by a summary lesson, or epiphonema:

To judge by the reiteration of this paradigmatic gesture of magnanimity and princely virtue in Miguel de Cervantes's La española inglesa (written ca. 1602–03, published 1613), this report of the Cádiz mission may well have had the effect intended by its original author and Hakluyt, affording a lesson on the power of Christian mercy to discerning readers both in England and abroad. The conflict in both the “Briefe and true report of the Honorable voyage vnto Cadiz, 1596” and the novella by Cervantes is indeed ultimately not between Catholics and Protestants, or even between Spain and England, but instead, insistently, between good and bad Christians of both denominations and nationalities.Footnote ⁸⁸ In a similar vein, a letter sent to Philip II of Spain (1527–98) by the Marquis of Priego, Pedro Fernández de Córdoba (1563–1606) on 9 September 1596 uses the English as an example of how one may win over the enemy with mercy: “In Cádiz, the English general used his own money to redeem one Juan Gómez de Portillo, a corporal who had been part of a squadron of supply ships in the campaign to England [in 1588]. From this and other matters that could be reported, one understands that war ought also to be waged by this path of clemency and liberality toward enemies, and, truly, it is by this path that victories are made most easy. Great captains used clemency and liberality, and by this means achieved greater things than by the violence of arms. The reason for this must be that, seeing good treatment, [enemies] do not resist them as they would if the war were bloody.”Footnote ⁸⁹

Without exaggerating the instructive and often admonitory intent of the “Briefe and true report of the Honorable voyage vnto Cadiz, 1596,” it is worth noting that it is as much a parable as it is a work of history. This is not to say that it is untruthful — for even those who criticize it for favoring Essex or, on the contrary, for depicting matters from the perspective of Lord Admiral Howard, whom the author, Roger Marbeck (ca. 1536–1605), served as physician,Footnote ⁹⁰ do not question its conformity to fact — but rather that the truths for which it is most concerned are of a spiritual and moral nature, beyond mere temporal affairs. Perhaps most evident among the changes made by Hakluyt is the omission of several pages describing life at sea before the fleet reached Cádiz. Julian S. Corbett — still the only critic to compare Hakluyt's edition to the original report — focuses on these pages in proposing that “the Doctor's lively style seems to have displeased [Hakluyt], and in editing it for his collection of voyages he sadly mutilated it. The Doctor is particular in relating everything that struck him as worthy of record in naval laws, manners, and customs, but nearly the whole of these passages Hakluyt modified or omitted.”Footnote ⁹¹ As Corbett notes, Hakluyt abridged the original's explanation of the ceremony of “hailing,”Footnote ⁹² yet this made up only a small part of the missing pages. Far more substantial and significant are the paragraphs in which Marbeck first accounts for the very low number of men lost to illness while en route to Cádiz and then narrates his attendance to Admiral Howard, describing how Howard and others, including Essex, showed their humanity and service to God.Footnote ⁹³ The first section, which focuses on Howard alone, reads: “To this Deuine service of god none was at all tymes more redie or more dilligent, then o[ur] Lord Generall himself, hauing allwaies a most vigilant eye, that his most vertuous sonne sir william howard should not at any tyme be missing from the same, still exhorting hym openlie to haue a principall care and regard of the seruice of god, and then no doubt hee should prosper in all his doinges, whereunto albeit it pleased so honourable a father to haue so carefull a mynd, yet such is the honourable gentlemans good disposition and inclination of himself to all good qualities godlines and vertue, as in my conscience I thinke it pleased the almightie the more favorablie to blesse our shipps and company in this honourable action.”Footnote ⁹⁴

In light of such praise for Howard, it is difficult to see how Marbeck's report could be construed as biased toward Essex, unless it was instead the omission of this passage that led someone familiar with both the original and Hakluyt's edition to call for the censorship of the Principal Navigations. As this is highly unlikely, one may ask why Hakluyt might have deleted this part of Marbeck's narrative. One possibility is that he considered it expedient to arrive more directly at the fight in Cádiz, rather than dwell on the features that made it an “honorable voyage” as a whole. This is the course taken by John Stow (1525–1605) in 1600 and Samuel Reference PurchasPurchas in 1625 in their respective accounts of the Cádiz campaign, based in part (Stow) or in whole (Purchas) on Marbeck's text in Hakluyt's edition.Footnote ⁹⁵ Although in each case the opening pages invite a particular reading of the action to follow, this is political in the brief introductions by Purchas and Stow, and Providential in the more extensive ones by Hakluyt and especially by Marbeck. Writing from the perspective of a somewhat later time, in which the divisions between Catholics and Protestants in Spain and England had solidified, Purchas points to the “gaine and liberty” to be had “in the dispersing of that Spanish cloud which from the time of the match [joining Mary and Philip II] had houered ouer vs, and of the concomitant Antichristian Papall Mists; which was a smoake from the bottomlesse pit to them which receiued it, and a fire to them which refuse it of what degree soeuer.”Footnote ⁹⁶ With greater concern for domestic politics, Stow instead describes the tensions among England's defenders, giving the title and purview of each participant, with special attention given to nobles, as well as the measures that were necessary to maintain order as the expeditionary force took shape. As a result, his account of the raid itself almost takes on the nature of a scorecard, fitting in with the rivalries and self-aggrandizing reports of the main protagonists.

While Marbeck's report is also personalized, especially in regard to the character and conduct of Lord Howard, its aim is radically different in that it presumes to explain by this means the Providence — “the mercifull goodnes of th'allmightie” — derived by England in its voyage. Hakluyt subscribes in part to this design, but by eliminating or abbreviating the sections of text that deal with individual acts of devotion or kindness, he makes Providence the result more specifically of collective endeavor. His heroes are “the two most Noble and Renowned Lords Generals” — and not each by himself. England triumphs by attending to God's work, which is in turn, for Hakluyt, the quintessence of all national interest. This concept of nationalism is rooted in the Christian ideal of communitas and informs Hakluyt's edition of works on navigation, especially in speaking of the course to be taken by England in the future.

Hakluyt follows Marbeck in starting, not with an account of Spain's offenses against England, but with the measured response of Elizabeth and her people, so as to establish the righteousness of England's cause and its conformity to theological and civil principles of justice. The narrator applauds the piety and good order of England's forces, which seem to act as a single entity,Footnote ⁹⁷ while he has Queen Elizabeth herself articulate in a prayer the motives that guide her and the nation in preparing for war. In this, the texts by Marbeck and Hakluyt diverge from the more conventional and overtly political practice of Stow, who instead cites the official declaration of causes drawn up by William Cecil, Lord Treasurer Burghley (1520–98), and issued in the names of Essex and Howard.Footnote ⁹⁸ Although Elizabeth's prayer was allegedly a private utterance “for her own use,”Footnote ⁹⁹ it also served as propaganda, as its immediate and widespread diffusion confirms:

This prayer, supposedly said as the fleet set sail, was translated into Latin by Marbeck “for certaine diuers good motiues which then presently came to my minde.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ Though Marbeck does not reveal what these motives might be until later, it is not difficult to guess, for Elizabeth carefully adheres to the criteria for just war that were prescribed not only in the Thirty-Nine Articles (1571) of the Church of England but also by Cicero (106–43 bce) and medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–74), whose views on such matters had greater authority abroad, especially in Catholic nations.Footnote ¹⁰² This attention to the demands of an international audience distinguishes Elizabeth's justification of war with Spain from that issued a half-century later by Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), who, with a domestic public foremost in mind, begins with Spain's offenses and then cites Acts 17:25–27 to defend the role that unfettered commerce plays in promoting “the common Brotherhood between all Mankinde.”Footnote ¹⁰³

Despite this amalgamation of political and theological concerns, and the suggestion that so many spoils won with so little bloodshed must be the work of divine inspiration and Providence,Footnote ¹⁰⁴ one should not conclude that Hakluyt's purpose in presenting the “Briefe and true report of the Honorable voyage vnto Cadiz, 1596” was, like that of its original author, solely to recommend compliance with spiritual ideals, especially restraint and clemency, in the crown's policies and in dealing with now-disgraced heroes such as the Earl of Essex. If the intent of the text was in the first instance partly political, as Hakluyt suggests in his preface, Hakluyt's changes also open it to the broader concerns of navigation in general, so that the voyage to Cádiz elucidates the role of religion in empire and the world at large.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Like other royal histories in the Renaissance, Marbeck's report presumes not merely to honor and glorify its actors but also to coerce their future dealings by holding them to the ideals that they are made to champion in the text.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ In contrast, with Hakluyt's revisions, the published version of the “Briefe and true report of the Honorable voyage vnto Cadiz, 1596” provides a model for patriotic endeavor, whose success and honor demand that one and all adhere to Christian principles. For as in Hakluyt's descriptions of Spain's American conquests, England enjoys God's favor in the assault on Cádiz only when the entire force acts of a single, Christian mind, setting aside petty and partisan concerns in favor of those voiced by the queen on behalf of the nation and faith.

This understanding of pietas patriae reflects the views of Marbeck, who, as we have seen, translated Elizabeth's prayer into Latin so that he might later use it to convince her enemies “how vnwillingly, and vpon how great and vrgent occasions her Maiesty was, as it were enforced to vndertake this action,” and thus lead everyone, including the reader, “to praise her Maiesties good inclination, and earnestly to wish that there might be a firme concord and peace againe.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ It is also consistent with the dogma spread by Lord Howard and Dr. Henry Hawkyns. Whereas the former wrote that “the mercy and clemency, which hath been shewed, will be spoken of thro’ those parts of the world,”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ the latter translated Elizabeth's oration into Italian to contradict the claim “that in England there was neither prayer, nor knowledge of Christ, nor indeed any religion.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Hakluyt's editorial changes go still further by expunging any note of discord from England's ranks, so that when the queen speaks for the nation it does not contradict her words with its actions. This projection of communitas most strongly distinguishes the text issued in the Principal Navigations from others about the Cádiz mission, including those published by Purchas and Stow based on the same source.

The moral and spiritual frame used by Marbeck and Hakluyt is brought clearly into focus by consideration of the ellipses in Purchas's edition, which methodically passes over the examples of restraint, piety, compassion, and good judgment by the English combatants featured in the original report. Purchas fails to mention how “the poore wretches [captured near Lisbon] were maruellously well vsed by the Lords Generall”; how “the great mercy & goodness of our liuing God” was visible even amid the hostilities; how Sir Edward Hobby was “a man beautified with many excellent rare gifts, of good learning and vnderstanding”; how the lords general, “skant wel furnished with any more defence then their shirts, hose, and dublets . . . were abroad in the streets themselves” to keep the peace; and how Spain's repudiation of benevolent terms for surrender “was much maruelled at of vs, and so much the more, for that, as I sayd before, there had bene made some offer for the redemption and sauing of the goods, and it was not to them vnknowen that this their offer was not misliked, but in all probabilitie should haue bene accepted.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ It is revealing that such omissions are greatest in the description of the aftermath of battle, in which Marbeck and Hakluyt acclaim the Providential nature of England's victory:

Purchas also passes over in silence, through abridgement, the comportment that confirmed the righteousness of England's cause in the eyes even of her enemies: “Such was the heroicall liberality, and exceeding great clemencie, of those most honourable Lords Generall, thereby, as it should seeme vnto mee, beating downe that false surmised opinion, which hath bene hitherto commonly spread abroad, and setled among the Spaniards: which is, That the English doe trouble them and their countries, more for their golde, riches and pearle &c. then for any other iust occasion. Whereas by these their honourable dealings it is manifest to all the world, that it is onely in respect of a iust reuenge for the manifolde iniuries, and most dishonourable practises that haue beene from time to time attempted by them against vs and our natiõ, and also in the defence of the true honour of England: which they haue sought, and daylie doe seeke, by so many sinister and reprochfull deuices, so much as in them lieth, to deface.”Footnote ¹¹² Also omitted by Purchas are the episodes in which Marbeck uses Elizabeth's prayer to win over her enemies, in which the mercy shown by England in freeing Turkish captives results in praise for Elizabeth's “infinitely Princely vertues,” and in which the English and Spanish leaders, Lord Howard and the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Alonso Pérez de Guzmán (1550–1615), both explicitly adhere to Christian principles in negotiating the exchange of prisoners. Together, these concluding scenes drive home the lessons contained in the original report as a whole.

As in the preceding account of the defeat of the Armada, the Dutch serve as a point of comparison, highlighting England's collective moral resolve and the benefits that accrue from Christian piety. Here again, Hakluyt's changes to the text are significant, for although Marbeck indicates the way by lauding England's “straight and religious observance” of the “honourable and mercifull Edict” issued by the lords general to maintain order after the end of combat, Hakluyt makes consentaneity a hallmark of the English approach from the outset.Footnote ¹¹³ To this end, he omits a paragraph about how, “at the verie first tyme of their settinge out, there fell a certaine great striffe and contention, betweene the two Lords Generalls.”Footnote ¹¹⁴ Marbeck notes that some might consider such bickering among heroes “a matter not much materiall, or touchinge, the very substaunce of the action,” if not also a “great blott of their good name, and estimation,” yet his aim is not to defame them, but to show the deleterious effect that ambition has upon the morale and discipline, “not onlie of their principall men, and brauest captaines, but also even of the very meanest and basest of their followers.” By dwelling on conflict, Marbeck hopes to instruct the reader, and, insofar as “very much harme, and greef, did ensue not longe,” due to the character of the lords general, his report concludes that it is “a thinge most woorthie the putting downe, as an honourable example, for all such to respect and imitate, as shall heereafter in the like manner bee imployed.”Footnote ¹¹⁵

Despite equally normative and moralizing pretensions, Hakluyt chooses to omit this lesson — learned at some cost by the lords general — from his published account. The focus thus shifts from the trials of command to the Providential success of collective action. Pointedly leaving both the horrors of war and the accounting of spoils “to other mens iudgement and report,” the text feigns disinterest in worldly benefit. In this, it echoes Hakluyt's Discourse of Western Planting, which, as we have seen, asserts that exploration and the conversion of pagans must go forward without regard for cost or profit, but instead with the certainty of carrying out God's enterprise, confident that a higher reward will follow. Such assertions are constant in Hakluyt's writings, as in the dedication of the Divers voyages (1582): “Godlinesse is great riches, and . . . if we first seeke the kingdome of God, al other thinges will be giuen vnto us . . . as the light accompanieth the Sunne, and the heate the fire, so lasting riches do waite vpun them that are zealous for the aduancement of the kingdome of Christ, and the enlargement of his glorious Gospell: as it is sayde, I will honour them that honour mee.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ Such conceits were used in part for rhetorical effect, yet we should not doubt their sincerity, even though other writers of the time applied them to less principled intentions.Footnote ¹¹⁷ As we shall see, the profession of disinterest in material benefits is essential to the message of Marbeck's account and to Hakluyt's volume of navigations in which it serves as a conclusion.

In this light, the final section of the “Briefe and true report of the Honorable voyage vnto Cadiz, 1596” is especially significant, for it answers the question as to why “the Lords generall rested so long at Cadiz, and went no farther,” with philosophical and moral, rather than practical arguments — that is, without giving the political and economic motivations of the participants and without mentioning the disagreement among them. Instead, after ridiculing the very idea of inquiring into such arcane matters, Marbeck states the following:

Apart from the jocular tone, which self-consciously points to the author's divergence from the practice of “inferiour persons,” one should note the liberty taken in applying Tacitus (ca. 56–ca. 120 ce) to the situation at hand: we are seemingly enjoined to accept without question the choices made by our political leaders, whereas Tacitus instead observes — in truth, he complains — that, if in the past it was nature itself that constrained inquiry into the world at large beyond our own borders, it is now “thought more holy and reverent to believe the acts of the gods than to know them with certainty.”Footnote ¹¹⁹

Anyone familiar with the stand actually taken by Essex — who as commander of the land forces lobbied Howard to occupy the region around Cádiz, and subsequently censured him for failing to do soFootnote ¹²⁰ — would find this distortion of classical wisdom and the resulting profession of trust in royal, rather than divine, authority intriguing to say the least. Because of Tacitus's prominence in English letters at the time,Footnote ¹²¹ and the proficiency in Latin both of Marbeck, who translated Elizabeth's prayer, and of Hakluyt, whose careful edition of Pietro Martire d'Anghiera's De Orbe Nouo decades has already been noted, this is certainly no casual error. On the contrary, the explanations given in the text for the restraint of the lords general seem designed more to invite speculation about their motives than to lay the matter to rest. It is perhaps for this reason that Purchas chose to abridge the paragraph cited above immediately after the quotation in Latin, thereby omitting Marbeck's explicitly fanciful remarks about “dutiful minds,” “willing obedience,” and “heroicall designements.”Footnote ¹²² Also perplexing is Marbeck's claim that other conquests were simply “not woorth the saluting of such a royal companie.”Footnote ¹²³ Both assertions are deliberately unsatisfying if not read allegorically — “in a prety kind of mystical maner,” as Marbeck puts it — in which event they instead project the idea that true wealth derives from conformity to God's law:

Although the profession of disinterest in worldly riches is at times used cynically in reports such as Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana (1596) — which tries to explain the dearth of profit returned by English explorers by claiming that any attempt to exploit the land would have hindered future efforts to colonize its inhabitantsFootnote ¹²⁵ — Marbeck's characterization of material interest as a stale (bait or lure) to entrap those who, like birds of prey, presume to attack or feed upon others is especially poignant in the context of Hakluyt's collection as a whole. As we have seen, the same imagery features prominently in the admonitory poem that Théodore de Bèze addressed to Queen Elizabeth in 1588 in the wake of the Armada.Footnote ¹²⁶ More tellingly, the claim of indifference to material benefits not only closes the “Briefe and true report of the Honorable voyage vnto Cadiz, 1596,” but indeed launches Hakluyt's preface to the reader, in which the author's sacrifice perhaps stands in for that which he demands of the nation in its own journeys and travails:

True patriotic endeavor, “the honour and benefit of this Common weale wherein I liue and breathe,” is informed by higher values, beyond “priuate gaine, preferment, and ease.” This is the second epiphonema promised by Hakluyt.

By juxtaposing the force of authority to the ancients’ fear of the ocean, the citation from Tacitus applies more broadly to the concerns of navigation in general, that is, to what it means to venture beyond the familiar and local, and therefore to the significance implicit in the accounts of navigation published in Hakluyt's collection. The Pillars of Hercules not only marked the geographic limits of the oikoumenē — the “bound earth” known to ancient and medieval culture — but also symbolized the constraints put upon what Hakluyt's friend and contemporary Francis Bacon (1561–1626) called “the further endowement of the world with sound and fruitfull knowledge.” For as Bacon asked, disapprovingly, near the start of book 2 of The proficience and aduancement of Learning, diuine and humane (1605): “why should a fewe receiued Authors stand vp like Hercules Columnes, beyond which, there should be no sayling, or discouering?”Footnote ¹²⁸ This is indeed the same question that Marbeck poses in his “mystical” interpretation of Tacitus, especially in the self-consciously ironic conclusion.

Discerning readers of Hakluyt's time would likely have found Marbeck's advice improper in the same way that Tacitus's remark that it is “thought more holy and reverent to believe the acts of the gods than to know them with certainty” must have struck others in his day and age. In both times and places, the world was fast revealing its secrets, with the insights of experience increasingly contesting those to be had from auctoritas (learning) alone. The ability to journey beyond the Pillars of Hercules, cross the ocean, and span the entire world held the promise to modern nations like England of an empire greater than any ancient empire. Yet, like Tacitus and like other humanists of his own day, Hakluyt was mindful of higher, especially spiritual, values, because without their guidance in the quest for knowledge, honor, wealth, fame, and empire, a nation is apt to lose its way and founder in the great sea of being, now enlarged with the discovery of America.