E.G.R. Taylor - A Brief Summe of Geographie, by Roger Barlow

Edited by
E.G.R. TAYLOR

by

Edited with an Introduction and Notes

BY

E. G. R. TAYLOR, D.SC., F.R.G.S.

LONDON

PRINTED FOR THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY

1932

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW

IT seems at first sight curious that the earliest account in English of the New World should have been unregarded for nearly four centuries, nor is the fact that it was largely a translation from a work published in Spanish a sufficient explanation. The manuscript of Roger Barlows Brief Summe of Geographie has no doubt often been glanced at, but historians searching for narratives of discovery deemed it of no importance, for its theme is the description, coast by coast, of the then known world. Only recently have geographers awakened to the value of such contemporary descriptions as material for the reconstruction of the geography of the past, that is to say, for true historical geography: these will value for itself the work as now edited, but historians, too, will find that it is not without interest as filling a gap in the story of English maritime expansion. For the general reader, however, its charm will lie in large measure in its revelation of the spelling and diction, of the modes of thought and geographical notions, of a man who was educated and left boyhood behind in the reign of King Henry the Seventh, a man who was the first of our race to set foot on the vast Pampas of Argentina, the first to describe the charm and wonder of its bird and animal life, a man of action too, who would have anticipated the exploits of Frobisher and Drake had not fate brought all his plans and projects to naught.

The manuscript, although docketed Geographia Barlow, has no title. A title has therefore been supplied from a phrase employed by its author, with a slight modification of spelling in the interests of euphony.

The authors thanks are due to Dr. J. A. Williamson and to Mr. Heawood for many helpful suggestions, to Sir William Foster for kindly reading the proofs, and to Mr. Lynam for his assistance in seeing the book through the Press.

E. G. R. TAYLOR

CHELSEA, 1932.

JUST four centuries ago, a certain Roger Barlow, a Bristol and Seville merchant, having spent some ten years in travel and adventure overseas, returned to his native city in the West Country as a man of substance, and was presently to be found living the life of a country gentleman, and bringing up seven children, on a large estate in Pembrokeshire. When he first arrived in England, in the winter of 1531, he was full of a project, then startlingly novel, for discovering and establishing an all-English trade route to the new Spiceries, or East Indies as we term them to-day, but the premature death of a wealthy friend and business associate, who had taken this project actually in hand, and the preoccupation of King Henry VIII and his ministers with quite other matters, led Barlow to put the idea aside for nearly a decade. Only in 1540-41 did he consider the time ripe for making an actual proposal for its fulfilment to the King, and in order to strengthen the arguments he employed, he accompanied them by a treatise on cosmography of his own authorship, the Brief Somme of Geographia1 which forms the subject of the present volume.

In his method alike of presenting and of supporting his scheme for discovery, Roger Barlow elected to follow a Spanish model, for at Seville he had seen with his own eyes the valuable results obtained by the Spaniards in that field. His work, therefore, embodies an almost word for word translation, including even, mutatis mutandis, the preamble to Charles V. of Spain, of the volume which was prepared by the Bachiller Enciso in 1518, to support a project for an all-Spanish trade route across the Pacific to the self-same goalthe Spiceries. While Barlow added much original and supplementary matter to the Suma de Geographia of Enciso, the intrinsic interest and importance of the latter, of which Barlows manuscript remains the only complete English translation, makes it permissible first of all to consider the Spanish book and its author at some length.