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Gilbert (SIR HUMPHREY an English)

SIR HUMPHREY, an English navigator; born in Dartmouth, Devonshire, in 1539; educated at Eton and Oxford. Then, abandoning law for a career of arms, he did such good service against the Irish rebels as earned him knighthood and the government of Munster (1570), after which he saw five years' campaigning in the Netherlands.

In 1576 appeared his "Discourse on a Northwest Passage to India," which was published by George Gascoigne, without his knowledge; two years later he obtained a royal patent to "discover and occupy remote heathen lands not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people." With his younger half-brother, GILA MONSTER