In conclusion, before laying down the pen with which has been exhumed and set up on a new pedestal one of England’s worthiest of her many forgotten Worthies, let the holder crave the indulgence of the reader for the illogical, wordy and mixed style of this essay.  He is perfectly aware of these shortcomings, but puts in the plea that while groping in the past as if blindfolded he has been decoyed on step by step by the unexpected recovery of new materials after the others were in type, so that as often as he had finished his labor of love new facts have turned up which he had not the heart to reject.  So he has incorporated them one after another as best he could.  The results are more inartistic and crude than he could have wished, but he hesitates not on that account to invite lovers of and believers in the Truth of History to the banquet he has prepared.

A well-dined Reader is not likely, the writer thinks, to quarrel with his dessert because he has to pick out, with some little patience, the dainty meats of the nuts he has to arrange and crack for himself.  Repetition, and perhaps some contradiction, are acknowledged.  But meandering thoughts and ill-digested narratives, though tedious, are not criminal.  When these new materials have dried in the noon-day sun for a year and a day, the writer then, or at the expiration of the Horatian period, may bring them back to his anvil to be re-hammered.  May they then prove as true as they now seem new, is the wish of the admirer of Thomas Hariot, the first historian of Virginia, the friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, the companion of Henry Percy, and the Benefactor of Mankind.

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THE WILL of THOMAS HARIOT

Recorded in the Archdeaconry Court of London

IN THE NAME OF

GOD Amen ye nine and twentieth daie of june, in the yeare of or Lord God 1621 And in ye yeares of the reigne of or Soueraigne Lord James by the Grace of God of England Scotland Fraunce & Ireland Kinge Defender of the Faythe & (that is to saie) of England Fraunce & Ireland the nineteenth And of Scotland the fower & fiftieth I THOMAS HARRIOT of Syon in the County of Midd Gentleman being troubled in my bodie wth infirmities.  But of pfecte minde & memorie Laude & prayse be giuen to Almightie God for the same doe make & ordayne this my last will and testamt.  In manner and forme following (viz) First & principally I Comitte my Soule in to the hands of Almighty God my maker and of his sonne Jesus Christe my Redeemer of whose merritts by his grace wrought in mee by the holy Ghoste I doubte not but that I am made ptaker, to thend that I may enioye the Kingdome of heaven ppared for the electe.  Item my will is that if I die in Londn that my bodie bee interred in the same pishe Churche of the house where I lye the we” I comitte to the discrecon of my Executors hereafter named, Excepte taking the