In the laborious collection of his material, much “dispersed, scattered, and hidden in several hucksters’ hands,” as he says, he sought the assistance of the foremost scholars, bibliographers, and writers, and cultivated the acquaintance of all classes of men who could give him information. He tells of talking with Don Antonio, the Portuguese Pretender, when in Paris, and with several of Antonio’s “best captains and pilots, one of whom was born in the East Indies.” He became friendly with travelled French sailors. One of them gave him a piece of supposed silver ore, and showed him “beasts’ skins draped and painted by Indians.” Another exhibited “a piece of the tree called Sassafras brought from Florida, and expounded its high medical virtues,” which afterward was much sought by voyagers to America. He browsed in the king’s library at Paris. He established friendly relations with foreign cosmographers and exchanged letters with them and with other foreign scholars. In London he found and copied rare manuscripts in Lord Lumley’s “stately library”; had access to the queen’s privy gallery at Westminster; and to a rich cabinet of curiosities brought home by travellers. He sought English sea-captains upon their return to port and had informing interviews with them about their adventures. Some brought him tales from Spain about the natives of Florida. Once he travelled two hundred miles on horseback to interview one Thomas Butts, then the only survivor of a disastrous English voyage to Newfoundland in 1536. The initial volume was completed after his final return to England at the end of his term with the French embassy. Its publication was a distinct event in English letters. The lofty motives that impelled him to the production of the enlarged edition in three volumes he details in his picturesquely phrased “Epistle Dedicatorie” to Lord Charles Howard, prefixed to volume one.