Thomas Hariot, the Mathematician, the Philosopher and the Scholar

Volume Ii, Page 76. ‘hodie Allatae Sicut a Dome Communi 4 Billae;

Prima, For the Confirmation of the Queen’s Majesty’s Letters Patents, granted to Walter Raughlieghe, Esquire, touching the Discovery and Inhabiting of certain Foreign Lands and Countries, quae ia vice lecta est.’ It does not appear precisely at what date the Bill received the Queen’s signature, but probably as early as Christmas or New Year.

Having now early in 1585 secured the Confirmation of this much coveted patent which liberally permitted him in the name and under the aegis of England to plant a ‘colonie’ and found an English empire in the New World at his own expense of money, men, and enterprise; having pocketed the geographical results and valuable experience of the French in Florida and Canada; having vainly attempted a visit to Newfoundland in 1578, and having succeeded to the rights and privileges of his noble half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert; having received by the return in September of his two reconnoitring barks favorable reports as to the properest place to begin his Western Planting in Wingandacoa ; and being thoroughly supported by the good wishes and hearty co-operation of the Queen and many of her prominent and influential subjects, Raleigh rose superior to all jealousies and opposition.

This lasted as usual just so long as he was successful and no longer. But he was blessed in his household, or at his table, or in his confidence, with four sterling adherents who stuck to him through thick and thin, through prosperity and adversity. These were Richard Hakluyt, Jaques Le Moyne, John White and Thomas Hariot. When Wingandacoa makes up her jewels she will not forget these Four, whom it is just to call Raleigh’s Magi.

With marvellous energy, enterprise, and skill Raleigh collected and fitted out in an incredibly short time a fleet of seven ships well stocked and well manned to transport his ‘first colonie’ into the wilds of America. It was under the command of his valiant cousin, Admiral Sir Richard Grenville, and sailed from Plymouth on the 19th of May 1585. Never before did a finer fleet leave the shores of England, and never since was one more honestly or hopefully dispatched. There were the ‘Tyger’ and the ‘Roe Buck’ of 140 tons each, the ‘Lyon’ of 100 tons, the ‘Elizabeth’ of 50 tons, the ‘Dorothea’, a small bark, and two pinnaces, hardly big enough to bear distinct names, yet small enough to cross dangerous bars and enter unknown bays and rivers. In this splendid outfit were nearly two hundred souls, among whom were Master Ralfe Lane as governor of the colony. Thomas Candish or Cavendish afterwards the circumnavigator, Captain Philip Amadas of the Council, John White the painter as delineator and draughtsman, Master Thomas Hariot the mathematician as historiographer, surveyor and scientific discoverer or explorer, and many others whose names are preserved in Hakluyt.

The fleet had a prosperous voyage by the then usual route of the West Indies and fell in with the main of Florida on the 20th of June, made and named Cape Fear on the 23d, and a first landing the next day, and on the 26th came to Wococa where Amadas and Barlow had been the year before. They disembarked and at first mistook the country for Paradise. July was spent in surveying and exploring the country, making the acquaintance of the natives, chiefly by means of two Indians that had been taken to England and brought back able to speak English. On the 5th of August Master John Arundel, captain of one of the vessels, was sent back to England, and on the 25th of August Admiral Grenville, after a sojourn of two months in Virginia, took his leave and returned, arriving at Plymouth on the 18th of October. There were left in Virginia as Raleigh’s ‘First Colonie,’ one hundred and nine men. They remained there one whole year and then, discontented, returned to England in July 1586 in Sir Francis Drake’s fleet coming home victorious from the West Indies.

One of these 109 men was Thomas Hariot the Author of the Report of Virginia. Another was John White the painter. To these two earnest and true men we owe, as has been said, nearly all we know of ‘Ould Virginia.’ Their story is briefly told by Hakluyt.

Sir Francis Drake in the true spirit of friendship went out of his way to make this call on the Colony of his friend Raleigh. He found them anything but contented and prosperous. They had long been expecting supplies and reinforcements from home, which not arriving, on the departure of Drake’s fleet becoming dejected and homesick, they petitioned the Governor for permission to return. Immediately after their departure a ship arrived from Raleigh, and fourteen days later Sir Richard Grenville himself returned with his fleet of three ships, new planters and stores of supplies, only to find the Colony deserted and no tidings to be had. Leaving twenty men to hold possession the Admiral made his way back to England.

It has already been stated how and under what circumstances the epitome of the labours and surveys of Hariot came to be printed, but it may be well to show how it came to be united with John White’s drawings and republished a year or two later as the first part of De Bry’s celebrated collections of voyages. Hakluyt returned to Paris at the end of 1584. and remained there, perhaps with an occasional visit to London, till 1588, always working in the interests of Raleigh. In April 1585, a month before the departure of the Virginia fleet, he wrote to Walsingham that he ‘was careful to advertise Sir Walter Raleigh from tyme to tyme and send him discourses both in print and in written hand concerning his voyage.’ Rene Goulaine de Laudonnière’s Journal had fallen into Hakluyt’s hand, and he induced his friend Basanier the mathematician to edit and publish it. This was done and the work was dedicated to Raleigh and probably paid for by him. Le Moyne the painter and mathematician who had accompanied the expedition, one of the few who escaped into the woods and swamps with Laudonnière the dreadful morning of the massacre, was named by Basanier. He also mentions a lad named De Bry who was lucky enough to find his way out of the clutches of the Spanish butchers into the hands of the more merciful American Savages. This young man was found by De Gourgues nearly three years later among the Indians that joined him in his mission of retribution against the Spaniards, and was restored to his friends well instructed in the ways, manners and customs of the Florida Aborigines.

This journal of Laudonnière carefully edited by Basanier was completed in time to be published in Paris in 1586, in French, in octavo. It was dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh. Hakluyt translated it into English, and printed it in small quarto in London the next year and it reappeared again in his folio voyages of 1589. The French edition fell under the eye of Theodore De Bry the afterwards celebrated engraver of Frankfort, formerly of Liege. Whether or not this engraver was a relative of young De Bry of Florida is not known, but we are told that he soon sought out Le Moyne whom he found in Raleigh’s service living in the Blackfriars in London, acting as painter, engraver on wood, a teacher and art publisher or bookseller.

De Bry first came to London in 1587 to see Le Moyne and arrange with him about illustrating Laudonnière’s Journal with the artist’s maps and paintings, and remained here some time, but did not succeed in obtaining what he wanted, probably because Le Moyne was meditating a similar work of his own, and being still attached to the household of Raleigh was not free to negotiate for that peculiar local and special information which he had already placed at Raleigh’s disposal for his colony planted a little north of the French settlement in Florida, then supposed to be in successful operation, but of which nothing had yet been published to give either the world at large or the Spaniards in the peninsula a premature clue to his enterprise.

There is still preserved a good memorial of De Bry’s visit to London in the celebrated funeral pageant at the obsequies of Sir Philip Sidney in the month of February 1587, drawn and invented by T. Lant and engraved on copper by Theodore de Bry in the city of London, 1587. A complete copy is in the British Museum, and another is said to be at the old family seat of the Sidneys at Penshurst in Kent, now Lord de L’lsle’s; while a third copy not quite perfect adorns the famous London collectionof Mr Gardner of St John’s Wood Park.

LeMoyne died in 1588, and De Bry soon after came to London a second time and succeeded in purchasing of the widow of Le Moyne a portion of the artist’s drawings or paintings together with his version of the French Florida Expeditions. While here this time De Bry fell in with Richard Hakluyt, who had returned from Paris in November 1588, escorting Lady Sheffield.

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