CHAP. XI.

VOYAGE TO MARACAIBO IN 1499.

As it is certain that Sebastian Cabot did not enter the service Spain until the 13th of September 1512, we are obliged to look anxiously round, in every direction, for information as to his employment during the intermediate period. It is impossible to believe that he could have passed in inactivity the period of life best adapted for enterprise and adventure, and to which he at the same time brought maturity of judgment and abundant experience. Yet the Records, so far as made public, furnish no evidence on the subject, for though commissions were granted, as we shall have occasion hereafter to show, by Henry VII., in 1501 and 1502, to Portuguese adventurers, with a view to discovery, yet the name of Cabot is sought for in vain.

Amidst this darkness of the horizon, there gleams up happily, in one quarter, a light which enables us to recognise objects with surprising clearness.

A valuable work has recently been published by the Rev. Mr Seyer, entitled, "Memoirs Historical and Topographical of Bristol and its Neighbourhood, from the earliest period down to the present time." At p. 208, of vol. ii., it is stated that some of the ancient Calendars of Bristol, under the year 1499, have the following entry :

"This yeare, Sebastian Cabot borne in Bristoll, proffered his service to King Henry for discovering new countries; which had noe greate or favorable entertainment of the king, but he with no extraordinary preparation sett forth from Bristoll, and made greate discoveries."

We might be inclined, perhaps, to attach no great importance to this statement and to view it as referring, with a mistake of date, to one of the Northern voyages, but that late disclosures absolutely compel us to seek some such clue to facts, which, without its aid, are altogether inexplicable.

In the recent work of Don Martin Navarette, who has spread out the treasures of the Spanish Archives, he remarks (tom. iii. p. 41), "Lo cierto es que Hojeda en su primer viage hallo a ciertas Ingleses por las immediaciones de Caquibacoa" -"what is certain is, that Hojeda in his first voyage, found certain Englishmen in the neighbourhood of Caquibacoa").

These expressions occur in that part of the work where the author adverts to the commissions which the English Records show to have been granted by Henry VII., and to his inability to refer to any other quarter the remarkable fact of the meeting. Such a connexion, however, is deceptive, because the earliest of these commissions bears date the 19th March 1501.

Hojeda sailed from Spain on the 20th of May 1499 (Navarette, tom. iii. p. 4), and was only one year absent.

The mere fact that Cabot is known not to have entered a foreign service until long after this period, would suffice to satisfy us that he was the only man who could have been the leader of such an enterprise from England, particularly as we find that when, two years afterwards, an expedition was projected, three Portuguese were called in and placed at its head. The Bristol manuscript seems to put the matter beyond doubt.

The expressions, also, there employed imply a slight of the subject on the part of the King, and probably embody a complaint uttered at the time. The voyage of 1498 had not, we may suspect, proved so productive as was anticipated, and the interest felt the year before now languished. Some complaint of this kind is discoverable in the conversation of Cabot at Seville, reported by Ramusio, though the neglect is certainly referred, in that report, to an erroneous period.

When we remember that Cabot, the year before, was stop

ped by the failure of provisions while proceeding Southward, he might naturally be expected to resume his progress along the coast on the first occasion, and he would thus be conducted to the spot where Hojeda found him. It is probable, therefore, that impatient of inactivity, and despairing of aid from the Crown, he threw himself into such a vessel as his private means enabled him to equip, and, as the Bristol manuscript expresses it, "with no extraordinary preparation set forth from Bristol and made great discoveries."

It may have been while he followed the bent of his genius in this desultory manner, that the spirit of enterprise awakened again in England, and his absence may account for the non-appearance of his name in the subsequent patents.

A less agreeable conjecture is suggested by the character of Henry VII. That shrewd and penurious monarch may have been influenced by the same feeling which induced Ferdinand of Spain to rid himself of Columbus, whose high estimate of what he had effected was found to mingle, inconveniently, with all his proposals for following up the Great Discovery. Henry may have preferred to listen to those with whom a bargain might be made solely in reference to prospective services. Avarice, a disease to which he was constitutionally subject and of which the symptoms became every year more apparent, had now reached his moral sense. Bacon, who wrote his History under the eye of James, a lineal descendant and professed admirer of that monarch, could not disguise the evidence of the infamous devices to which Henry resorted for the purpose of extorting money from his own subjects. Speaking of his escape from the difficulties which at one time beset him, and particularly from the long and vexatious feuds with Scotland, it is remarked

"Wherefore nature, which many times is happily contained and refrained by some bands of fortune, began to take place in the King; carrying, as with a strong tide, his affections and thoughts unto the gathering and heaping up of treasure. And as kings do more easily find instruments for their will and humour, than for their service and honour, he had gotten for his purpose, or beyond his purpose, two instruments, Empson and Dudley, whom the people esteemed as his horse

leeches and shearers, bold men and careless of fame, and that took toll of their master's grist.

"Then did they also use to inthral and charge the subjects' lands with tenures in capite,' by finding false offices, and thereby to work upon them for wardships, liveries, primer seisins, and alienations, being the fruits of those tenures, refusing, upon divers pretexts and delays, to admit men to traverse those false offices according to the law. Nay, the King's wards, after they had accomplished their full age, could not be suffered to have livery of their lands, without paying excessive fines, far exceeding all reasonable rates. They did also vex men with informations of intrusion upon scarce colourable titles.

"When men were outlawed in personal actions, they would not permit them to purchase their charters of pardon, except they paid great and intolerable sums standing upon the strict point of law, which upon outlawries giveth forfeiture of goods; nay, contrary to all law and colour, they maintained the king ought to have the half of men's lands and rents, during the space of two full years, for a pain in case of outlawry.

"And to show further the king's extreme diligence, I do remember to have seen long since a book of accompt of Empson's, that had the king's hand almost to every leaf, by way of signing, and was in some places postilled in the margin with the king's hand likewise, where was this remembrance :

"❝Item, Received of such a one five marks, for a pardon to be procured; and if the pardon do not pass, the money to be repaid: except the party be some other ways satisfied.'

"And over against this memorandum' of the king's own hand,

"Otherwise satisfied.'”

"Which I do the rather mention, because it shews in the king a nearness, but yet with a kind of justness. So these little sands and grains of gold and silver, as it seemeth, helped not a little to make up the great heap and bank."

It is remarkable that the First Patent is to the father and the three sons, "and to the heirs of them, and each of them and their deputies ;" and it is expressly provided that the regions discovered by them, "may not of any other of our subjects be frequented or visited, without the licence of the aforesaid John and his sons, and their deputies, under pain of forfeiture as well of the ships as of all and singular the goods of all them that shall presume to sail to those places so found." Under this grant, the "Londe and Isles" were discovered, and, of course, a right of exclusive resort to these regions, vested in the father and sons for an indefinite period. The patent of 3rd February, 1498, on the other hand, is very cautiously worded. The power given is to the father alone, described as a Venetian, and to his deputies without any words of inheritance. The whole merit of the discovery is, perhaps

craftily, represented as embodied in the old man. The privilege given expired, in strictness, with John Cabot; and Sebastian, by having incautiously accepted and acted under such an instrument, might be held to recognise it as the consummation of all that had been previously done, and as a waiver of the terms of the first patent.

The Portuguese patentees of 19th March 1501, consent to receive the privilege of exclusive resort for only ten years; and it is provided that they shall not be interfered with, by virtue of any previous grant to a foreigner ("extraneus") under the great seal ("virtute aut colore alicujus concessionis nostræ sibi Magno Sigillo Nostro per antea facta"). It is true the pen is drawn through this passage in the original Roll; but attention had evidently been drawn, in an adverse temper, to a claim that might be set up under the previous grant. It was, perhaps, thought better not to aim an ungracious, and superfluous blow at what had already expired. The clause is retained which secures the new patentees against molestation from any of the king's subjects, and this provision was considered as applying to the surviving sons who, in the original patent, are not, like the father, called Venetians, but were probably all born in England.

It is not, however, certain that Henry intended to supersede the claims of Cabot, so far as respected discoveries actually made. The general authority to the three Portuguese is as to lands before unknown to all Christians ;" and the reservation may mean more than a caution to respect the rights of foreign nations. The patent of 19th March 1501 gives a wider range for discovery than even the original one to the Cabots. It authorises discoveries to the South; ad omnes partes, regiones et fines maris Orientalis, Occidentalis, Australis, Borealis et Septentrionalis." The two marked words occur in this patent, and also in that of 9th December 1502, but are not found in that of 5th March, 1496.

However all this may be, the meagre evidence referred to