Richard Eden was an alchemist and translator. His translations of the geographic works of other writers helped foster a spirit of overseas exploration in Tudor England.

Early life

His father was a cloth merchant. He attended Christ's College, Cambridge

Christ's College, Cambridge

Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.With a reputation for high academic standards, Christ's College averaged top place in the Tompkins Table from 1980-2000 . In 2011, Christ's was placed sixth.-College history:...

 and subsequently Queens' College, graduating BA in 1538 and MA in 1544. As a protégé of Sir Thomas Smith, Eden associated with intellectuals such as John Cheke

John Cheke

Sir John Cheke was an English classical scholar and statesman, notable as the first Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University....

 and Roger Ascham

Roger Ascham

Roger Ascham was an English scholar and didactic writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of education...

 and was given a minor position in the treasury

Treasury

A treasury is either*A government department related to finance and taxation.*A place where currency or precious items is/are kept....

 from 1544 to 1546.

From the late 1540s he worked for Richard Whalley, who had been sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1595. He was salaried at £20 per annum searching for the secret of turning base metal into gold.

Overseas exploration

The new protector, the earl of Northumberland

Earl of Northumberland

The title of Earl of Northumberland was created several times in the Peerages of England and Great Britain, succeeding the title Earl of Northumbria. Its most famous holders were the House of Percy , who were the most powerful noble family in Northern England for much of the Middle Ages...

, wished to challenge Spain's global empire and open up the Far East to European trade; he encouraged publications that would help encourage such enterprise and, under his direction, in 1552 Eden became secretary to Sir William Cecil and, in 1553, published A Treatyse of the Newe India, a translation of part of Sebastian Muenster's Cosmographia

Cosmographia (Sebastian Münster)

The Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster from 1544 is the earliest German description of the world. It had numerous editions in different languages including Latin, French , Italian, English, and even Czech. The last German edition was published in 1628, long after his death...

.

In 1555 Eden's The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India

Decades of the New World

Decades of the New World is the common English term for Peter Martyr's De orbe novo decades, a series of letters and reports of the early explorations of Central and South America that were published beginning 1511 and later anthologized...

translated the works of others including parts of Pietro Martire d'Anghiera's De orbe novo decades, Gonzalo Oviedo's Natural hystoria de las Indias. .

In 1561 he translated Martín Cortés de Albacar

Martín Cortés de Albacar

Martín Cortés de Albacar was a Spanish cosmographer. In 1551 he published the standard navigitional textbook Arte de navigar Cortés was born in Bujaraloz, province of Zaragoza, Aragon...

's Arte de navigar as The Arte of Navigation which became the first English manual of navigation.

External links