ILLUSTRATIONS

Plan of Westminster, A.D. 1593,

Reproduced from a copy in the British Museum of the
Speculum Britaniae, The first parte by The travaile
and vew of John Norden, Anno 1593.

Letter from Richard Hakluyt to Sir Francis
Walsingham, 1st April, 1584.

In the first part of this letter Hakluyt urges on Sir
Francis Walsingham the foundation of a lecture
on Mathematics in Oxford, and another, on the
Arte of Navigation' in London, at a yearly stipend
of Fifty pounds each. In my simple judgment,'
writes Hakluyt, the money so spent wold be
the best hundred pounds bestowed, that was
bestowed these five hundred yeares in England.'
The remainder of the letter gives various items
of news which may be of political interest to
Walsingham. The letter was written when Hak-
luyt was chaplain to the Embassy in Paris. It is
docquetted 'primo Aprilis 1584. Ffrom M Hak-
luite the preacher at Paris' and endorsed in a
modern hand This is a private not a diplomatic
letter from Hackluyt to Walsingham.' The repro-
duction is made, by permission, from the original

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preserved in the Public Record Office. The letter itself runs as follows:

Right honorable: the famouse disputations in al the partes of the mathematicks wch at this present are held in Paris for the gayning of the lecture wch was erected by the worthy scholer Petrus Ramus to the greate increase of those excellent sciences, put mee in mynd to sollicite yo' honour agayne and agayne for the erection of that lecture of the Arte of Navigation, whereof I have had some speach with yo' Honor, Sir Ffrancis Drake, and Alderman Barnes and other. And that you might meet with al inconveniences wch might frustrate the expected profit wch is hoped for by the erection of the same, I send yo' honor heare the testament of Petrus Ramus newely put out agayne in printe and sent unto mee by Monsieur Bergeron Ramus his executor, whereby you may see, first the exceeding zeale that man had to benefit his countrey, in bestowing 500 livres (wch as yo honor knoweth) is fiftie pound sterling, uppon establishing of that lecture, bequething not halfe soe much to al the kinred and friends he had. Secondly you may note that he being one of the most famouse clerks of Europe thought those sciences next after divinitie to be most necessarie for the comonwelth, in that he erected a newe lecture of the same, wheras there was one before erected and endued with fiftie pound stipend by the Kinge of Ffrance. Thirdly that most provident order wch the good man by his wil hath taken, is most requisite to be put in execution in England: wch is, that every three yeares, there shalbe publicke disputations signified to al men by publicke writing, wherein yt shalbe free for any man for three moneths space to dispute agaynst the reader for the tyme being, who yf he be found negligent, or yf any one of the competitours be found more worthy by the opinion of certayne