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came thither it was very dark. The printer had there no acquaintance, neither any kind of weapon about him, neither knew he how far the crank would go, because he then suspected that they dogged him of purpose. He there stayed him, and called for the constable, which came forth diligently to enquire what the matter was. This zealous printer charged this officer with him as a malefactor and a dissembling vagabond. The constable would have laid him all night in the cage that stood in the street. "Nay," saith this pitiful printer, "I pray you have him into your house; for this is like to be a cold night, and he is naked: you keep a victualling house; let him be well cherished this night, for he is well able to pay for the same. I know well his gains hath been great to-day, and your house is a sufficient prison for the time, and we will there search him.' The constable agreed thereunto: they had him in, and caused him to wash himself: that done, they demanded what money he had about him. Saith this crank, "So God help me, I have but twelve pence," and plucked out the same of a little purse. "Why, have you no more?" quoth they. "No," saith this crank, "as God shall save my soul at the day of judgment." "We must see more," quoth they, and began to strip him. Then he plucked out another purse, wherein was forty pence. "Tush," saith this printer, "I must see more." Saith this crank, "I pray God I be damned both body and soul if I have any more. "No," saith this printer, "thou false knave, here is my boy that did watch thee all this day, and saw when such men gave thee pieces of six pence, groats, and other money; and yet thou hast shewed us none but small money." When this crank heard this, and the boy vowing it to his face, he relented, and plucked out another purse, wherein was eight shillings and odd money; so had they in the whole that he had begged that day thirteen shillings threepence halfpenny. Then they stripped him stark naked, and as many as saw him said they never saw handsomer man, with a yellow flaxen beard, and fair skinned, without any spot or grief. Then the good wife of the house fetched her goodman's old cloak, and caused the same to be cast about him, because the sight should not abash her shamefast maidens, neither loth her squeamish sight.

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Thus he set down at the chimney's end, and called for a pot of beer, and drank off a quart at a draught, and called for another,

and so the third, that one had been sufficient for any reasonable man, the drink was so strong; I myself, the next morning, tasted thereof. But let the reader judge what and how much he would have drunk and he had been out of fear. Then when they had thus wrung water out of a flint in spoiling him of his evil gotten goods, his passing pence, and fleeting trash, the printer with this officer were in jolly jollity, and devised to search a barn for some rogues and uprightmen, a quarter of a mile from the house, that stood alone in the fields, and went out about their business, leaving this crank alone with his wife and maidens. This crafty crank, espying all gone, requested the good wife that he might go out on the backside to make water, and to exonerate his paunch. She bad him draw the latch of the door and go out, neither thinking or mistrusting he would have gone away naked. But, to conclude, when he was out, he cast away the cloak, and, as naked as ever he was born, he ran away, that he could never be heard of again. Now the next morning betimes, I went unto Newington, to understand what was done, because I had word or it was day that there my printer was. And at my coming thither, I heard the whole circumstance, as I above have written; and I, seeing the matter so fall out, took order with the chief of the parish that this thirteen shillings and threepence halfpenny might the next day be equally distributed, by their good discretions, to the poverty of the same parish, and so it was done.

[The counterfeit crank was eventually captured, as Harman relates in a subsequent edition of his book.]

THOMAS HARMAN, A Caveat or Warening for Commen Cursetors 1567

CHAPTER XI

THE SEA

Boatswain. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail! Tend to the master's whistle !-Blow, till thou burst thy wind, if room enough!

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Gonzalo. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground; long heath, brown furze, any thing. The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death. The Tempest, 1. i.

Yet his means are in supposition: he hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies; I understand moreover upon the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he hath, squandered abroad. But ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be land-rats and water-rats, land-thieves and water-thieves,-I mean pirates,—and then there is the peril of waters, winds and rocks.

The Merchant of Venice, 1. iii. 17-25.

Hakluyt extols England's Greatness at Sea

He does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies. Twelfth Night, III. ii. 87.

To the Right Honourable Sir Francis Walsingham Knight. Right Honourable, I do remember that being a youth, and one of her Majesty's scholars at Westminster that fruitful nursery, it was my hap to visit the chamber of Mr Richard Hakluyt my cousin, a gentleman of the Middle Temple, well known unto you, at a time when I found lying open upon his board certain books of cosmography, with an universal map. He seeing me somewhat curious in the view thereof, began to instruct my ignorance, by showing me the division of the earth into three parts after the old account, and then according to the latter and better distribution, into more: he pointed with his wand to all the known seas, gulfs, bays, straits, capes, rivers, empires, kingdoms, dukedoms, and territories of each part, with

declaration also of their special commodities and particular wants, which, by the benefit of traffic and intercourse of merchants, are plentifully supplied. From the map he brought me to the Bible, and turning to the 107 Psalm, directed me to the 23 and 24 verses, where I read, that they which go down to the sea in ships, and occupy by the great waters, they see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep, etc. Which words of the prophet together with my cousin's discourse (things of high and rare delight to my young nature) took in me so deep an impression, that I constantly resolved, if ever I were preferred to the university, where better time and more convenient place might be ministered for these studies, I would by God's assistance prosecute that knowledge and kind of literature, the doors whereof (after a sort) were so happily opened before me.

According to which my resolution, when, not long after, I was removed to Christ Church in Oxford, my exercises of duty first performed, I fell to my intended course, and by degrees read over whatsoever printed or written discoveries and voyages, I found extant either in the Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portugal, French or English languages, and in my public lectures was the first, that produced and showed both the old imperfectly composed, and the new lately reformed maps, globes, spheres and other instruments of this art for demonstration in the common schools, to the singular pleasure and general contentment of my auditory. In continuance of time, and by reason principally of my insight in this study, I grew familiarly acquainted with the chiefest captains at sea, the greatest merchants and the best mariners of our nation: by which means having gotten somewhat more than common knowledge, I passed at length the narrow seas into France with Sir Edward Stafford, her Majesty's careful and discreet leger, where during my five years' abode with him in his dangerous and chargeable residency in her Highness's service, I both heard in speech, and read in books other nations miraculously extolled for their discoveries and notable enterprises by sea, but the English of all others, for their sluggish security and continual neglect of the like attempts especially in so long and happy a time of peace, either ignominiously reported or exceedingly condemned................. Thus both hearing, and reading the obloquy of our nation, and finding few or none of our own men able to reply herein,

and further, not seeing any man to have care to recommend to the world the industrious labours and painful travels of our countrymen for stopping the mouths of the reproachers, myself being the last winter returned from France with the honourable the Lady Sheffield, for her passing good behaviour highly esteemed in all the French court, determined notwithstanding all difficulties to undertake the burden of that work wherein all others pretended either ignorance, or lack of leisure, or want of sufficient argument, whereas (to speak truly) the huge toil, and the small profit to ensue, were the chief causes of the refusal......

To harp no longer upon this string, and to speak a word of that just commendation which our nation do indeed deserve: it cannot be denied, but as in all former ages, they have been men full of activity, stirrers abroad, and searchers of the remote parts of the world, so in this most famous and peerless government of her most excellent Majesty, her subjects through the special assistance and blessing of God, in searching the most opposite corners and quarters of the world, and to speak plainly, in compassing the vast globe of the earth more than once, have excelled all the nations and people of the earth. For, which of the kings of this land before her Majesty, had their banners ever seen in the Caspian Sea? which of them hath ever dealt with the Emperor of Persia, as her Majesty hath done, and obtained for her merchants large and loving privileges? who ever saw, before this regiment, an English leger in the stately porch of the Grand Signor at Constantinople? who ever found English consuls and agents at Tripolis, in Syria, at Aleppo, at Babylon, at Balsara, and which is more, who ever heard of Englishmen at Goa before now? what English ships did heretofore ever anchor in the mighty river of Plate? pass and repass the unpassable (in former opinion) straits of Magellan, range along the coast of Chili, Peru and all the backside of Nova Hispania further than any Christian ever passed, traverse the mighty breadth of the South Sea, land upon the Luzones in despite of the enemy, enter into alliance, amity and traffic with the princes of the Moluccas and the Isle of Java, double the famous Cape of Bona Speranza, arrive at the Isle of Santa Helena, and last of all return home most richly laden with the commodities of China, as the subjects of this now flourishing monarchy have done? RICHARD HAKLUYT, Principal Navigations (epistle dedicatory) 1589

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