NAVARRETE, Martin Fernandez de, a Spanish historian, was born at Abalos in Old Castile in 1765. After receiving his education at Vergara, he entered the navy as a midshipman in 1780. His ship was engaged in the unsuccessful siege of Gibraltar in 1782, and afterwards in the cruises against the Algerines and other pirates that infested the Mediterranean. Declining health, however, forced him to retire from active service in 1789. Meanwhile, in addition to his professional knowledge, he had been steadily acquiring an accurate acquaintance with history. The Spanish king, Charles IV., therefore fixed upon him as the proper person for compiling a collection of documents touching the maritime history of the country; and Navarrete set himself perseveringly to search the national archives. But new duties and other causes of interruption repeatedly retarded his great undertaking. The war, first against the French and subsequently against the British, kept him at his post on board the fleet from 1793 to 1797. Then he received an appointment in the office of the minister of marine. The invasion of the French happened in 1808, and forced him to remove to Seville. Other tasks occupied his attention after the restoration of Ferdinand VII. At length, in 1825, the first and second volumes of his gigantic work appeared under the title of Colección de los Viajes y Descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los Españoles desde fines del siglo XV. The third followed in 1829, and the fourth and fifth in 1837. Before the sixth and seventh could be published the author died in 1844.
The work of Navarrete, already mentioned, has been described by Humboldt as "one of the most important historical monuments of modern times." The industrious compiler was also assisting at the time of his death in the publishing of the Colección de Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España. A Life of Cervantes by Navarrete, printed in 1819, is said by Ticknor to be "one of the most judicious and best-arranged biographical works that have been published in any country." It furnished the materials for Thomas Roscoe's Life of the same author, published in 18mo, London, 1839. Navarrete was also the author of several lesser historical and biographical works.
Navarrete's Accretus included the Historia of Lower Navarre, and also a separate Spanish manuscript from c. 1170, Historia Chart, to whom it came by marriage, was suspected by the Catholic of the Vatican palace in 1610. The latter's that portion had a more slender boundary, and was governed by its own laws as a municipality. Navarrete suffered severely in the French and later wars. The united population of the five provinces, La Rioja, Navarre, Pamplona, Talavera, and Toledo, amounted in 1811 to 246,874.