The high functionary thus addressed was then in the service of Queen Elizabeth. The gross abuse, therefore, so indignantly denounced has no reference, we may be assured, to her, and we know that amongst the early acts of her reign was the appointment of Stephen Burrough to the office in question. The allusion, therefore, is to some dark tale of perversion between the death of Edward in 1553 and the accession of Elizabeth in 1558, and we can have little difficulty in coupling it with this mark of royal bounty at the expense of Cabot.

The allusion was, doubtless, well understood by the person addressed, for his father, then Lord High Admiral of England, is named, as we have seen, in the Charter of the Merchant Adventurers, (at the head of whom Cabot is placed) as one of the associates who had fitted out the vessels to prosecute discoveries in the North, North-West, and North-East.* Hakluyt alludes to this circumstance in his Dedication to the

son.

We look round with some interest for information as to William Worthington. The only notice of him discovered is in a passage of Strype's Historical Memorials (vol. ii, p. 506), where amongst the Acts of Edward VI. the youthful monarch is found, with an easy liberality, forgiving him a large debt on his allegation that a servant had run away with the money.

the

"A Pardon granted to William Worthington, being indebted to the King for and concerning the office of Bailiff and Collector of the Rents and Revenues of all the Manors, Messuages, Lands, Tenements, and Hereditaments within the City of London, and county of Middlesex, which did belong to Colleges, Guilds, Fraternities, or Free Chappels, in the sum of 392 pounds 10 shillings 3 pence, as upon foot of his account, made by the said William before Thomas Mildmay auditor of the said Revenues, manifestly it doth appear: In consideration of his service both in France and Scotland, and also his daily service and attendance, being one of the ordinary Gentlemen and Pensioners; and for that the Debt grew by the unfaithfulness of his servant, who ran away with the same. Granted in March, but the Patent signed in April."

See the Charter in Hakluyt, vol. i. p. 268.

It will be remembered* that in Hakluyt's earliest work, published in 1582, he speaks of all Cabot's Maps and Discourses written with his own hand as then in the possession of William Worthington. The facts disclosed may, perhaps, assist to account for their disappearance. It is obvious that such documents would be secured, at any price, by the Spanish Court, at the period of Hakluyt's publication, when English enterprise was scattering dismay amongst the Spanish possessions of America. The work of Hakluyt (six years before the Armada) showed where they were to be found. The depositary of them was the very man who had been the object of Philip's bounty during his brief influence in England. Were they not bought up? There can be now only a conjecture on the subject, yet it seems to gather strength the more it is reflected on..

Suspicion may even go back farther, and suggest that a main object in associating this man with Cabot was to enable him to get possession of the papers that they might be destroyed or sent to Spain. The fact that Worthington had received them was probably too well known to be denied by him; and his remark to Hakluyt may have been a mere mode of evading that person's prying curiosity. The same alarm which dictated the demand on Edward VI. for the return of Cabot would lead Philip to seize, with eagerness, an opportunity of getting hold of these documents, so that the author's dreaded knowledge might expire with himself. Of one thing we may feel assured. Hakluyt, who is found attaching so much importance to an "Extract" from one of Cabot's Maps, was not turned aside from efforts to get a sight of this precious Collection, but by repeated and peremptory refusals, for which, if it really remained in Worthington's hands, there occurs no adequate motive. The language of the Dedication seems to betray something of the sharpness of a personal pique.

Sixty-one years had now elapsed since the date of the first

* See p. 40.

commission from Henry VII. to Sebastian Cabot, and the powers of nature must have been absolutely wearied out. We lose sight of him after the late mortifying incident; but the faithful and kind-hearted Richard Eden beckons us, with something of awe, to see him die. That excellent person attended him in his last moments,* and furnishes a touching proof of the strength of the Ruling Passion. Cabot spoke flightily, "on his death bed," about a divine revelation to him of a new and infallible method of Finding the Longitude which he was not permitted to disclose to any mortal. His pious friend grieves that "the good old man," as he is affectionately called, had not yet, "even in the article of death, shaken off all worldlie vaine glorie." When we remember the earnest religious feeling exhibited in the Instructions to Sir Hugh Willoughby, and which formed so decided a feature of Cabot's character, it is impossible to conceive a stronger proof of the influence of long cherished habits of thought, than that his decaying faculties, at this awful moment, were yet entangled with the problem which continues to this day to vex, and elude, the human intellect. The Dying Seaman was again, in imagination, on that beloved Ocean over whose billows his intrepid and adventurous youth had opened a pathway, and whose mysteries had occupied him longer than the allotted span of ordinary life. The date of his death is not known, nor, except presumptively, the place where it occurred. From the presence of Eden we may infer that he died in London. It is not known where his Remains were deposited. The claims of England in the new world have been uniformly, and justly, rested on his discoveries. Proposals of colonization were urged, on the clearness of the Title thus acquired and the shame of abandoning it. The

See the Epistle Dedicatory to "A very necessarie and profitable book concerning Navigation compiled in Latin by Joannes Taisnerus, a publike Professor in Rome, Ferraria and and other Universities in Itake, of the Mathematicalles named a Treatise of Continual Motions. Translated into English.by Richard Eden, Imprinted at London by Richard Jugge." There is a copy of the work in the King's Library, British Museum (title in Catalogue, Eden).

English language would probably be spoken in no part of America but for Sebastian Cabot. The Commerce of England and her Navy are admitted to have been deeply-incalculably-his debtors. Yet there is reason to fear that in his extreme age the allowance which had been solemnly granted to him for life was fraudulently broken in upon. His birthplace we have seen denied. His fame has been obscured by English writers, and every vile calumny against him eagerly adopted and circulated. All his own Maps and Discourses "drawn and written by himself" which it was hoped might come out in print, "because so worthy monuments should not be buried in perpetual oblivion," have been buried in perpetual oblivion. He gave a Continent to England: yet no one can point to the few feet of earth she has allowed him in return!

BOOK II.

CHAP. I.

VOYAGES SUBSEQUENT TO THE DISCOVERY BY CABOT-PATENT OF 19TH MARCH 1501, NOW FIRST PUBLISHED, IN FAVOUR OF THREE MERCHANTS OF BRISTOL AND THREE PORTUGUESE-NATIVES BROUGHT TO ENGLAND AND EXHIBITED AT COURT-ERRONEOUS REFERENCE OF THIS INCIDENT TO CABOT-HAKLUYT'S PERVERSION-SECOND PATENT 9TH DECEMBER 1502-DR ROBERTSON'S MISCONCEPTIONS—PROBABLE REASONS FOR THE ABANDONMENT OF THE ENTERPRISE.

It is now proposed to pass in review the efforts which have been made at different periods, and under various auspices, to follow up the project of Cabot, so far as may be necessary to exhibit the pervading influence of the original enterprise. This part of the subject has in it little of an attractive, or popular, character; yet the close and minute inquiry which it involves will, it is hoped, be sufficiently relieved by its high purpose of rendering an act of tardy justice to the fame of this great seaman. The same ignorance, or malevolence, which has so long obscured the evidence of what he himself achieved, has been even yet more successful in effecting its object by an absurd exaggeration of the merit of subsequent navigators.

Attention is naturally turned, in the first place, to the