Western planting now became the talk and fashion. Many projects were hatching for new patents. Raleigh alone succeeded. Hakluyt’s position and circumstances in Paris seem made for the occasion, and he soon found all these western eggs put into his basket. The materials of the several previous writers and of the rival claimants were all apparently thrust upon him. He thus became in 1583-4, though perhaps unconsciously, the mouthpiece of a snug family party all playing into the hands of Raleigh. There were Walsingham, and Sidney, and Carleil, and Leicester, all connected with each other and with Raleigh. Then there were the papers of Sir George Peckham, Edward Hayes, Richard Clarke master of the Delight, and Steven Par-menius, rich alike in hints and facts. The interests of these distinguished persons were by family ties or other influence suddenly merged into a single patent and that Raleigh’s. The papers mostly passed through Raleigh’s hands into Hakluyt’s, who acknowledges himself indebted to him for his chiefest light. Raleigh, besides being the half-brother and representative of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, held also a large share in that venture. Gilbert’s real aim, policy and plan, in this last yearof his patent, to prospect for a suitable place in which to take possession and found a colony, was to begin at the south and work northward as the French had done, but his previous failures since 1578, the inevitable impediments and delays, the advanced season of this his last year 1583, and the necessity of making a final strike for success, in behalf of himself and his assignees, compelled him at the last hour to go direct to Newfoundland, take possession, and then, if thought best, work southward. He was however unquestionably influenced or professed to be by rumours of metals or gold mines in Newfoundland. This northern passage was his fatal mistake. Had he taken a middle or southern course say between 37° and 42° he might perhaps have succeeded. Under these circumstances Hakluyt’s Discourse of Western Planting was written, and may be considered as a digest of many plans without much originality and a consolidation of many interests. Hakluyt and Raleigh were at Oxford together, but we find no particular evidence of their intimacy before the Spring of 1584, when Hakluyt had returned to London from Paris with his Discourse, or perhaps it was partly written in England. It is pretty certain that it was not shown to the Queen before the date of the Patent, the 25th of March, as Hakluyt speaks of her seeing it in the summer. It was probably intended principally for the promotion of the interests of the Patent in Parliament.