Produced by Karl Hagen and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
** Transcriber's Notes **
The printed edition from which this e-text has been produced retains thespelling and abbreviations of Hakluyt's 16th-century original. In thisversion, the spelling has been retained, but the following manuscriptabbreviations have been silently expanded:
- vowels with macrons = vowel + 'n' or 'm'- q; = -que (in the Latin)- y[e] = the; y[t] = that; w[t] = with
This edition contains footnotes and two types of sidenotes. Most footnotesare added by the editor. They follow modern (19th-century) spellingconventions. Those that don't are Hakluyt's (and are not alwayssystematically marked as such by the editor). The sidenotes are Hakluyt'sown. Summarizing sidenotes are labelled [Sidenote: ] and placed before thesentence to which they apply. Sidenotes that are keyed with a symbol arelabeled [Marginal note: ] and placed at the point of the symbol, except inpoetry, where they are moved to the nearest convenient break in the text.
** End Transcriber's Notes **
Collected by
and Editied by
Edmund Goldsmid, F.R.H.S
Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries
IN NORTH-EASTERN EUROPE.
A briefe Treatise of the great Duke of Moscouia his genealogie, being taken
out of the Moscouites manuscript Chronicles written by a Polacke.
It hath almost euer bene the custome of nations, in searching out theinfancie and first beginnings of their estate, to ascribe the same vntosuch authors as liued among men in great honour and endued mankinde withsome one or other excellent benefite. Nowe, this inbred desire of allnations to blaze and set foorth their owne petigree hath so much preuayledwith the greater part, that leauing the vndoubted trueth, they haue betakenthemselues vnto meere fables and fictions. Yea and the Chronicles of manynations written in diuers and sundrie ages doe testifie the same. Euen sothe Grecians boasted that they were either Autocthones, that isearthbredde, or els lineally descended from the Gods. And the Romansaffirme that Mars was father vnto their first founder Romulus. Right welltherefore and iudicially sayth Titus Liuius: Neither meane I to auouch(quoth he) ne to disable or confute those thinges which before the buildingand foundation of the Citie haue beene reported, being more adorned andfraught with Poeticall fables then with incorrupt and sacred monuments oftrueth: antiquitie is it to be pardoned in this behalfe, namely in ioyningtogether matters historicall and poeticall, to make the beginnings ofcities to seeme the more honourable. For sith antiquity it selfe isaccompted such a notable argument of true nobility, euen priuate men in allages haue contended thereabout. Wherefore citizens of Rome being desirousto make demonstration of their Gentrie, vse to haue their auncestors armespainted along the walles of their houses: in which regarde they were sopuffed vp, that oftentimes they would arrogantly disdaine those men, whichby their owne vertue had attained vnto honour. In like sorte Poets, whenthe originall of their woorthies and braue champions was either vtterlyvnknowen or somewhat obscure, would ofte referre it vnto their Godsthemselues. S