ABSTRACT
Portions of northern Europe, particularly the Netherlands and the Rhineland, were as well known to sixteenth-century Englishmen as anywhere else in the world, Italy not excepted. But for northern Europe Richard Hakluyt deliberately refrained from exploiting such sources of information. As he pointed out in the preface to the first edition of the Principall navigations, ' I stand not vpon any action perfourmed neere home, nor in any part of Europe commonly frequented by our shipping. As soon as Hakluyt collection began to move into the sixteenth century, he virtually ceased to interest himself in the doings of Englishmen in northern Europe west of Muscovy. As far as northern Europe in the sixteenth century was concerned, the only addition to the second edition of Principal navigations was an account of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. At the end of the sixteenth century, English foreign trade was concentrated upon north-western Europe, and chiefly in the hands of the Merchants Adventurers.
