with the original of the fourteenth century—if the latter ever existed.
On the strength of a mention in Hakluyt and an allusion in Fuller, one Nicholas of Lynn has been credited with a voyage towards the Arctic regions about 1360. Nicholas of Lynn is known to have been a Carmelite and lecturer in theology at Oxford, where in 1386 he composed a calendar and elaborate astronomical tables.[1] He is supposed, on not very satisfactory evidence, to have been the author of a work known as 'Inventio Fortunata,' or ' Inventio Fortunæe.' No copy of the book exists, whether in manuscript or print, and it is indeed not altogether certain that it ever existed. The mention in Hakluyt resolves itself into a quotation from two other authorities, Gerardus Mercator, and John Dee.[2] Mercator refers to a description of the North Pole which he had taken out of a voyage by Cnoyen of s'Hertogenhosch,[3] who had met a priest at the King of Norway's court in 1364, and from him derived much information. The priest, we are told, was descended from those whom Arthur, the mythical King of Britain, had sent to inhabit "these islands" (probably Iceland), and he, again, reported that "in 1360 a certain English friar, a Franciscan and a mathematician of Oxford, came into these islands; who, leaving them, and pressing farther by his magical art, described all those places that he saw, and took the height of them with his astrolabe."
This is very fourth or fifth-hand evidence. On what Cnoyen said the priest had said that the friar said to him, Mercator based the idea that there were "four indraughts into an inward gulf or whirlpool with so great force that the ships which once entered therein could by no means be driven back," round about the North Pole. And John Dee,[4] who is also quoted by Hakluyt, tells us that in 1360 a friar of Oxford, being a good astronomer, went company with others to the most northern islands of the world." There he left his companions and proceeded yet farther to the north himself. He described the islands and "the indrawing seas" in a book which he called 'lnventio Fortunata' or 'Fortunæ.' Dee
- ↑ 'Dict. Nat. Biography,' Nicholas of Lynne.
- ↑ Hakluyt, B. L. i. 122.
- ↑ Cnoyen's book is lost, though extracts from it, sent by Mercator to John Dee, survive in Cotton MSS. Mercator adds that "it contained his voyage all through Asia, Africa, and the North; that it had been lent him by a friend in Antwerp, and restored by him; but that wanting it again, it could not be found.
- ↑ The mathematician and astrologer, 1527-1608.
