t
the year 1553 until about the year 1576--the only certainty is that
he was not a son of the Alderman. There is a record of the year
1560 that "Christopher Hudson hath written to come home ...
considering the death of his father and mother"; and, as the
Alderman died in the year 1555, and as his remarried widow was
alive in the year 1560, this is conclusive. Being come back to
England, this Christopher rose to be a person of importance in the
Company; as appears from the fact that he was one of a committee
(circa 1583) appointed to confer with "Captain Chris. Carlile ...
upon his intended discoveries and attempt into the hithermost parts
of America."

[Illustration: APPARATUS FOR CORRECTING ERRORS OF THE COMPASS.
FROM "CERTAINE ERRORS IN NAVIGATION." LONDON, 1610]

General Read thus summarized the result of his investigations: "We
have learned that London was the residence of Henry Hudson the
elder, of Henry Hudson his son, and of Christopher Hudson, and that
Captain Thomas Hudson lived at Limehouse, now a part of the
Metropolis; while Thomas Hudson, the friend of Dr. John Dee,
resided at Mortlake, then only six or seven miles from the City
... By reference to a statement made by Abakuk Prickett, in his
'Larger Discourse,' it will be found that Henry Hudson the
discoverer also was a citizen of London and had a house there."
From all of which, together with various minor corroborative facts,
he draws these conclusions: That Henry Hudson the discoverer was
the descendant, probably the grandson, of the Henry Hudson who died
while holding the office of Alderman of the City of London in the
year 1555; that he "received his early training, and imbibed the
ideas which controlled the purposes of his after life, under the
fostering care of the great Corporation [the Muscovy Company] which
his relatives had helped to found and afterwards to maintain"; that
he entered the service of that Company as an apprentice, in
accordance with the then custom, and in due course was advanced to
command rank.

That is the net result of General Read's most laboriously
painstaking investigations. The facts for which he searched so
diligently, and so longed to find, he did not find. In a foot-note
he added: "The place and date of Hudson's birth will doubtless be
accurately ascertained in the course of the examinations now being
made in England under my directions. The result of these researches
I hope to be able to present to the public at