Laurence Aldersey (fl. 1581–1586) was an English adventurer who made two journeys to the Levant, the accounts of which, ‘set downe by himself,’ are preserved to us in the pages of Hakluyt.
The two Japanese accompanied him all along, and probably stayed in England for about 3 years, since they are subsequently mentioned during the next mission of Cavendish to the Southern Atlantic, not in Hakluyt's Voyages, but in the writings of Samuel Purchas ("The admirable adventures and strange fortunes of Master Antonie Knivet, which went with Master Thomas Candish in his second voyage to the South Sea. 1591").
It also popularised the legend that Prince Madoc had discovered America in about 1170, a tale used to justify English encroachments on the territory of Spanish America (for example in Hakluyt's Discourse on Western Planting).