Robert Hayman
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Robert Hayman (14 August 1575 – November 1629) was a poet, colonist and Proprietary Governor of Bristol's Hope colony in Newfoundland.
Hayman was appointed the colony's first and only governor in 1618 when Bristol's Society of Merchant Venturers received a charter from King James I of England to establish the settlement. Hayman's brother in law, John Barker was the society's master. Hayman lived in the colony for fifteen months before returning to England and visited again over several summers until his tenure as governor ended in 1628. Much of his work was in England raising money for the settlement and encouraging more colonisation efforts.
As Newfoundland's first poet Hayman is remembered for his writings extolling the island and its early English pioneers. He is the author of Qvodlibets, lately come over from New Britaniola, old New-found-land. Epigrams and other small parcels, both morall and diuine. The first foure bookes being the authors owne: the rest translated out of that excellent epigrammatist, Mr. Iohn Owen, and other rare authors: With two epistles of that excellently wittie doctor, Francis Rablais: translated out of his French at large. All of them composed and done at Harbor-Grace in Britaniola, anciently called Newfound-Land. (1628). Qvodlibets ("What you will") was the first book of English poetry written in what would become Canada.
In the fall of 1628 Hayman left for the Amazon dying, a year later, of fever in Guyana.