When Sir Hugh Willoughby, in the last year of King Edward the Sixth's reign, started on his unfortunate expedition for the discovery of unknown regions, he received from John Cabot--the great pioneer of Colonial enterprise--a code of instructions which were strongly stamped with the marks of a practical piety. The fleet--as we learn from an old narrative--sailed down the Thames, the greater ships towed with boats and oars, the mariners being "apparelled in watchet or sky-coloured cloth;" and, as it passed Greenwich--where the Court resided, and where the young monarch was lying at the point of death--the people stood thick upon the shore, the privy councillors of his Majesty looking out at the windows; pieces of ordnance were fired, "insomuch that the tops of the hills sounded therewith," and the sky rang with the sailors' shouts; one man stood on the poop of the ship, and another walked on the hatches, whilst others were climbing up the shores and the mainyard--the good King, "only by reason of his sickness, was absent from this show." As Willoughby and his men started on their voyage--thus picturesquely described by an eye-witness--the directions which they carried with them, after strictly prohibiting all profane and immoral conduct, contained this very important rule:--"That the morning and evening prayer, with other common services appointed by the King's majesty and laws of this realm, to be read and said in every ship daily by the minister in the admiral, and the merchant, or some other person learned in other ships, and the Bible or paraphrases to be read devoutly, and Christianly, to God's honour, and for His grace to be obtained, and had by humble and hearty prayer of the navigants accordingly." "This," observes Thomas Fuller, "may be termed the first reformed fleet which had English prayers and preaching therein."[472] [Sidenote: _Early Adventurers._]