discoveries."* Failing in this, he returned to Bristol about the year 1490, and there his scheme for Atlantic voyaging found ready supporters. Throughout the remainder of Henry VII.'s reign Bristol was almost as famous a place of resort for English maritime adventurers as was Palos, under Ferdinand and Isabella, for Spanish seamen. "For the last seven years," wrote the Spanish ambassador in London to his sovereigns in 1498, "the people of Bristol have sent out every year two, three, or four light ships in search of the island of Brazil and the Seven Cities, according to the fancy of this Genoese,"-Genoese being written in error for Venetian.t About the first outcome of John Cabot's fancy, occurring at least one or two years before Columbus's earliest Voyage to the Indies, our only information is contained in a contemporary statement, that in 1480clearly a wrong date-" a ship of John Jay the younger, of eight hundred tons, and another, began their voyage from King's Road to the island of Brazil, to the west of Ireland, ploughing their way through the sea, and that Thlyde, the most scientific mariner in all England, was the pilot of the ships. News came to Bristol," it is added, "that the said ships sailed about the sea during nine *BERGENROTH, Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers, relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain, preserved in the Archives of Simancas and elsewhere, vol. i. (1862), p. 177. † BERGENROTH, vol. i., p. 177. Brazil was one of the many names given to all or part of the vaguely-defined district generally known as Cathay, apparently from the red dye-afterwards found in the real Brazil-which, as we have seen, was one of the Cathayan marvels. The island of the Seven Cities was another of these names. 1490-1496.] His Projected Voyage to Cathay. 31 months, and did not find the island; but, driven by tempests, they returned to a port on the coast of Ireland, for the repose of themselves and their mariners."* Of the later voyages, prior to 1497, we have no details at all, nor is it anywhere recorded that John Cabot personally shared in them. But it is clear that he was their chief instigator; and it is also clear that, though no land was reached, the Bristol explorers, by no means discouraged, only applied themselves with greater zest each year to their noble undertaking. A chief motive to perseverance was in the report of Columbus's discoveries, "whereof," as Sebastian Cabot is said to have remarked many years later, 66 was great talk in all the Court of King Henry VII., insomuch that all men, with great admiration, affirmed it to be a thing more divine than human, to sail by the west into the east, by a way that was never known before."† This general interest in the subject induced John Cabot to plan a more systematic voyage of discovery than had yet been attempted. On the 5th of March, 1496, he obtained letters patent from Henry VII., empowering him and his three sons, Lewis, Sanchez, and Sebastian, with their heirs and deputies, to sail to all countries and in all seas, east, west, or north, under the banner of England, with five ships of whatever size and strength they chose, for the discovery of islands, regions, and provinces of heathens and infidels hitherto unknown to Christendom in any * Cited by LUCAS, Secularia (1862), p. 112. † HAKLUYT, vol. iii., p. 7. part of the globe. This was to be done "at their own proper costs and charges;" but they were instructed to set up the English standard in all newly-found countries, and to subdue and possess them as lieutenants of the King. They were to have exclusive privileges of trade with the natives of these countries, and the King was to . receive one-fifth of all their profits in return for the favours bestowed.* This memorable expedition, second only in importance to that undertaken by Columbus four years and a half before, was not entered upon until the spring of 1497, and then it was in a more modest way than Henry's charter had sanctioned. In two stout ships, manned by three hundred of the ablest mariners that he could find, John Cabot and his sons-or, at any rate, his most famous son, Sebastian-sailed out of Bristol waters near the beginning of May. They went first to Iceland, whither Bristol merchants had been in the habit of sending ships for purposes of trade during the previous half-century or more. Sailing almost due west from Iceland, and apparently passing, without touching, the coast of Greenland, they reached the district now known as Labrador, but called by them and their successors New-found-land, on the 24th of June, 1497. It was at five o'clock in the morning that, from the prow of his ship, the Matthew, Cabot first saw the main land of America, just a year before Columbus, passing the West Indian islands, among which his two earlier voyages had been spent, first set eyes upon the * RYMER, Fœdera, vol. xii. (1711), p. 595; HAKLUYT, vol. iii., p. 4. |