II

Because of his full accomplishment of what others essayed and only partially accomplished, Hudson’s name is the best known—­excepting only that of Columbus—­of all the names of explorers by land and sea.  From Purchas’s time downward it has headed the list of Arctic discoverers; in every history of America it has a leading place; on every map of North America it thrice is written large; here in New York, which owes its founding to his exploring voyage, it is uttered—­as we refer to the river, the county, the city, the street, the railroad, bearing it—­a thousand times a day.

And yet, in despite of this familiarity with his name, our certain knowledge of Hudson’s life is limited to a period (April 19, 1607-June 22,1611) of little more than four years.  Of that period, during which he did the work that has made him famous, we have a partial record—­much of it under his own hand—­that certainly is authentic in its general outlines until it reaches the culminating tragedy.  At the very last, where we most want the clear truth, we have only the one-sided account presented by his murderers:  and murderers, being at odds with moral conventions generally, are not, as a rule, models of veracity.  And so it has fallen out that what we know about the end of Hudson’s life, save that it ended foully, is as uncertain as the facts of the earlier and larger part of his life are obscure.

An American investigator, the late Gen. John Meredith Read, has gone farthest in unearthing facts which enlighten this obscurity; but with no better result than to establish certain strong probabilities as to Hudson’s ancestry and antecedents.  By General Read’s showing, the Henry Hudson mentioned by Hakluyt as one of the charter members (February 6, 1554-5) of the Muscovy Company, possibly was our navigator’s grandfather.  He was a freeman of London, a member of the Skinners Company, and sometime an alderman.  He died in December, 1555, according to Stow, “of the late hote burning feuers, whereof died many olde persons, so that in London died seven Aldermen in the space of tenne monthes.”  They gave that departed worthy a very noble funeral!  Henry Machyn, who had charge of it, describes it in his delightful “Diary” in these terms:  “The xx day of December was bered at Sant Donstones in the Est master Hare Herdson, altherman of London and Skynner, and on of the masters of the gray frere in London with men and xxiiij women in mantyl fresse [frieze?] gownes, a herse [catafalque] of wax and hong with blake; and there was my lord mare and the swordberer in blake, and dyvers oder althermen in blake, and the resedew of the althermen, atys berying; and all the masters, boyth althermen and odur, with ther gren staffes in ther hands, and all the chylders of the gray frersse, and iiij in blake gownes bayring iiij gret stayffes-torchys bornying, and then xxiiij men with torchys bornying; and the morrow iij masses