In his Preface to the same volume, addressed to the “Friendly Reader,” he further emphasizes this point with the quaintly fashioned statement that in bringing these “antiquities smothered and buried in dark silence” to light, he has incorporated “into one body the torn and scattered limbs of our ancient and late navigations by sea, our voyages by land, and traffic of merchandise by both,” and restored “each particular member being before displaced, to their true joints and ligaments.” In other words, by the help of geography and chronology, which he terms “the Sun and the Moon, the right eye and the left of all history,” he has “referred each particular relation to the due time and space.” He narrates again in this Preface the toils that have been involved in bringing his work into this “homely and rough-hewn shape.” “What restless nights,” he exclaims, “what painful days, what heat, what cold I have endured; how many long and chargeable journeys I travelled: how many famous libraries I have searched into; what variety of ancient and modern writers I have perused; what a number of old records, patents, privileges, letters, etc., I have redeemed from obscurity and perishing; into how manifold acquaintance I have entered; what expenses I have not spared; and yet what fair opportunities of private gain, preferment, and ease I have neglected!” Yet, “howbeit, the honour and benefit of this commonweal wherein I live and breathe, hath made all difficulties seem easy, all pains and industry pleasant, and all expenses of light value and moment unto me.” Here speaks the true scholar and the genuine patriot. In 1585, while he was yet in France, ecclesiastical preferment came to Hakluyt, the reversion of the next prebendal stall that should become vacant being that year secured to him by Queen Elizabeth’s mandate; and the following year, upon the death of its incumbent, he took possession of the first stall in the cathedral of Bristol, although he did not give up his chaplaincy at the British embassy and finally return to England till 1588. In the spring of 1590 he was instituted to the rectory of Wetteringsett cum Blochford, in the county of Suffolk. In 1602 he became prebendary of Westminster. In 1612 he obtained the rectory of Gedney in Lincolnshire. He married about the year 1594, when occupying the Wetteringsett rectory.