ABSTRACT
Richard Norwood was fairly well known in the seventeenth century as a teacher of mathematics, the author of several books on navigation, and the man who surveyed the Bermudas soon after they were settled in 1612. Norwood had many of the experiences associated with the adventurous man of his day: shipwreck, attack by pirates, scurvy, the plague, a brief spell in prison. Although he nowhere refers to it, Norwood’s account as a whole is an exemplification of Augustine’s famous assertion at the beginning of his own confessions, ‘For thou hast created us for thyself, and our heart cannot be quieted till it may find repose in thee’. In his physical search for celestial happiness, Norwood resembles Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress. He frequently writes of his experience in the same wayfaring terms. Like Bunyan, Norwood attributed much of his trouble to having played into Satan’s hands through excessive scrupulosity and by submitting to doubts too inconsiderately.
