Richard Hayluyt was the protege of a dynasty of spies generally regarded as the foremost in history, Christopher Marlowe's bosses who directed the Information Operations which opened North American for settlement.
Hakluyt was a spook.
>In accordance with the instructions of Secretary Francis Walsingham, he occupied himself chiefly in collecting information of the Spanish and French movements, and "making diligent inquirie of such things as might yield any light unto our westerne discoveries in America
>1599 became an adviser to the newly-founded East India Company
>1590s Hakluyt became the client and personal chaplain of Robert Cecil
Hakluyt prepared an English translation of Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius' Mare Liberum (1609)
why? because
>In Mare Liberum, Grotius denied that the 1493 donation by Pope Alexander VI that had divided the oceans between Spain and Portugal entitled Spain to make territorial claims to North America. Instead, he stressed the importance of occupation, which was favourable to the English as they and not the Spanish had occupied Virginia. Grotius also argued that the seas should be freely navigable by all, which was useful since the England to Virginia route crossed seas which the Portuguese claimed
