Note 47 — INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Further, when it is considered who these experienced seamen were, it will at once be manifest that under no circumstances ought they to be stigmatised as “indifferent navigators”. Arthur Pet was with Richard Chancellor and Stephen Burrough in the Edward Bonaventure, on their first voyage to the Bay of St. Nicholas in 1553, his name standing in the list of “mariners” sixth before that of William Burrough47 (Stephen’s brother). Seven years afterwards, in 1560, he commanded the Jesus, of London, in the service of the Russia Company.48 And now, twenty years later, in the year 1580, a convincing proof is afforded of the estimation in which he was held, by the interest taken in him and his expedition by several of the most distinguished navigators and cosmographers of his time. For, in addition to his Commission from his employers, in whose service he had been seven-and-twenty years,—whether constantly or not is immaterial,—he received “Instructions and Notes”49 from “Master William Burrough”, Comptroller of the Navy, who had been his messmate seven-and-twenty years before, together with “Certaine briefe aduices giuen by Master Dee”,50 as also “Notes in writing, besides more priuie by mouth, that were giuen by M. Richard Hakluyt, of Eiton, in the countie of Hereford, esquire”;51 and, further, his voyage was deemed of sufficient importance to form the subject of a letter to Hakluyt himself from the learned Gerard Mercator.52