LeMoyne died in 1588, and De Bry soon after came to London a second time and succeeded in purchasing of the widow of Le Moyne a portion of the artist’s drawings or paintings together with his version of the French Florida Expeditions.  While here this time De Bry fell in with Richard Hakluyt, who had returned from Paris in November 1588, escorting Lady Sheffield.

Hakluyt at the end of this year, or the beginning of 1589, was engaged in seeing through the press his first folio collection of the voyages of the English, finished, according to the date in the preface, the 17th of November, though entered at Stationers’ Hall on the strength of a note from Walsingham the first of September previous.  Hakluyt with his mind full of voyages and travels was abundantly competent to appreciate De Bry’s project of publishing a luxurious edition of Laudonnière’s Florida illustrated with the exquisite drawings of Le Moyne.  Ever ready to make a good thing better, Hakluyt suggested the addition of Le Moyne’s and other Florida papers; and introduced De Bry to John White, Governor of Virginia, then in London.

White, an English painter of eminence and merit, was as an artist to Virginia what Le Moyne his master had been to Florida.  Le Moyne had twenty years before mapped and pictured everything in Florida from the River of May to Cape Fear, and White had done the same for Raleigh’s Colony in Virginia (now North Carolina) from Cape Fear to the Chesapeake Bay.  Le Moyne had spent a year with Laudonnière at Fort Caroline in 1564-65, and White had been a whole year in and about Roanoke and the wilderness of Virginia in 1585-86 as the right hand man of Hariot.

Together Hariot and White surveyed, mapped, pictured and described the country, the Indians, men and women; the animals, birds, fishes, trees, plants, fruits and vegetables.  Hariot’s Report or epitome of his Chronicle, reproduced by the Hercules Club, was privately printed in February 1589.  A volume containing seventy-six of White’s original drawings in water colours is now preserved in the Grenville library in the British Museum, purchased by the Trustees in March 1866 of Mr Henry Stevens at the instigation of Mr Panizzi, and placed there as an appropriate pendant to the world-renowned Grenville De Bry.  This is the very volume that White painted for Raleigh, and which served De Bry for his Virginia.  Only 23 out of the 76 drawings were engraved, the rest never yet having been published.  Thus Hariot’s text and map with White’s drawings are necessary complements to each other and should be mentioned together.

Knowing all these men and taking an active part in all these important events, Hakluyt acted wisely in inducing De Bry to modify his plan of a separate publication and make a Collection of illustrated Voyages.  He suggested first that the separate work of Florida should be suspended, and enlarged with Le Moyne’s papers, outside of Laudonnière.  Then reprint, as a basis of the Collection, Hariot’s privately printed Report on Virginia just coming out in February 1589, and illustrate it with the map and White’s drawings.  Hakluyt engaged to write descriptions of the plates, and his geographical touches are easily recognizable in the maps of both Virginia and Florida.