ENGLISH TRAVELLERS
OF THE RENAISSANCE
BY
CLARE HOWARD
BURT FRANKLIN: BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCE SERIES #179
1914
PREFACE
This essay was written in 1908-1910 while I was studying at Oxford asFellow of the Society of American Women in London. Material on the subjectof travel in any century is apparently inexhaustible, and one could writemany books on the subject without duplicating sources. The following aimsno further than to describe one phase of Renaissance travel in clear andsharp outline, with sufficient illustration to embellish but not to clogthe main ideas.
In the preparation of this book I incurred many debts of gratitude. Iwould thank the staff of the Bodleian, especially Mr W.H.B. Somerset, fortheir kindness during the two years I was working in the library of OxfordUniversity; and Dr Perlbach, Abteilungsdirektor of the KöniglicheBibliothek at Berlin, who forwarded to me some helpful informationconcerning the early German books of instructions for travellers; andProfessor Clark S. Northup, of Cornell University, for similar aid. To MrGeorge Whale I am indebted for the use of his transcript of Sloane MS. 1813, and to my friend Miss M.E. Marshall, of theBoard of Trade, for the generous gift of her leisure hours in reading forme in the British Museum after the sea had divided me from thattreasure-house of information.
I would like to acknowledge with thanks the kind advice of Sir WalterRaleigh and Sir Sidney Lee, whose generosity in giving time and scholarshipmany students besides myself are in a position to appreciate. Mr L.Pearsall Smith, from whose work on the Life and Letters of Sir HenryWotton I have drawn copiously, gave me also courteous personalassistance.
To the Faculty of the English Department at Columbia University I owethe gratitude of one who has received her earliest inclination toscholarship from their teachings. I am under heavy obligations to ProfessorA.H. Thorndike and Professor G.P. Krapp for their corrections andsuggestions in the proof-sheets of this book, and to Professor W.P. Trentfor continued help and encouragement throughout my studies at Columbia andelsewhere.
Above all, I wish to emphasize the aid of Professor C.H. Firth, ofOxford University, whose sympathy and comprehensionof the difficulties of a beginner in the field he so nobly commands can beunderstood only by those, like myself, who come to Oxford aspiring andalone. I wish this essay were a more worthy result of his influence.
CLARE HOWARD
BARNARD COLLEGE, NEW YORK
INTRODUCTION
Among the many didactic books which flooded England in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries were certain essays on travel. Some of these havenever been brought to light since their publication more than three hundredyears ago, or been mentioned by the few writers who have interestedthemselves in the literature of this subject. In the collections of voyagesand explorations, so often garnered, these have found no place. Most ofthem are very rare, and have never been reprinted. Yet they do not deserveto be thus overlooked, and in several ways this survey of them will, Ithink, be useful for students of literature.
They reveal a widespread custom among Elizabethan and Jacobeangentlemen, of completing their education by travel. There are scatteredallusions to t