Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation

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Hadrian VI See ADRIAN VI


Hakluyt, Richard (c. 1552–1616) English geographer
Born near London of a wealthy family, Hakluyt excelled as
a scholar and was educated at Westminster and Oxford.
After his ordination (1578) he remained at Oxford, lec-
turing on both geography and navigational technology. He
also took pains to befriend the great merchants and navi-
gators of the day. In 1583 he went to Paris, where for five
years he was chaplain to the English embassy and simul-
taneously accumulated a mass of information about for-
eign settlements and trade. He returned to devote his life
to promoting colonial expansion through his publica-
tions, putting much emphasis on the value of America.
Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries
of the English Nation first appeared in 1589, and the three-
volume second edition (1598–1600) is indispensable to
any study of the theme in this period. The London Hak-
luyt Society, founded in 1846 to promote the study and
publication of early travel narratives, is named in his honor.
Hakluyt’s 1589 volume was republished in a two-
volume facsimile by the Hakluyt Society in 1965, edited
with an introduction by D. B. Quinn and R. A. Skelton.
The expanded second edition, The Principal Navigations,
Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation,
Made by Sea or Over-land, to the Remote and Farthest Dis-
tant Quarters of the Earth at Any Time within the Compasse
of These 1500 Yeeres: Divided into Three Severall Volumes,
According to the Positions of the Regions, whereunto They
Were Directed, was republished in 12 volumes by Mac-
Lehose of Glasgow, U.K., in 1903–05. There is a one-
volume selection of Hakluyt’s writings in the Penguin
Classics series (Voyages and Discoveries, 1982).


Further reading: David B. Quin (ed.) The Hakluyt
Handbook (2 vols, London: Hakluyt Society, 1974; repr.
Cambridge University Press).

Hamilton, Patrick (c. 1504–1528) Scottish Protestant
martyr
A precocious scholar, Hamilton became abbot of Fern, in
Angus, while still a boy (1517). He gained an MA from the
University of Paris in 1520 and later studied at both St.
Andrews and Aberdeen. During this period he showed a
growing attraction to Lutheran ideas and in 1527 he trav-
eled to Germany, where he met both LUTHER and
MELANCHTHONand visited the new Protestant university
at Marburg. On his return to Scotland, Hamilton preached
the new doctrines openly and was called to a conference
at Aberdeen, where Alexander ALESIUSattempted to refute
his arguments. The following year he was formally
charged with heresy by James Beaton, archbishop of St.
Andrews, and put to death. His courage at the stake is said
to have clinched Alesius’s own conversion to Luther-
anism. As Scotland’s first Protestant martyr, Hamilton be-
came a revered figure in his homeland after the
Reformation there. His only written work, an exposition
of JUSTIFICATION BY FAITHknown as the Loci communes, or
“Patrick’s Places,”’ gained a wide circulation through its
inclusion in FOXE’s Book of Martyrs.

Hamlet The tragedy by SHAKESPEAREwritten about 1600
and first published in a corrupt form (Bad Quarto) in
1603 and a better version (Good Quarto) in 1604/05. The
plot is based on an episode in the 12th-century Danish
history of Saxo Grammaticus, which was amplified by
François de Belleforest in Histoires tragiques (1576) and

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