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VIII., and flourished in full vigour under the fostering hand of Elizabeth. The first enterprize undertaken solely by Englishmen, of which we have any record, was at the suggestion of Master Robert Thorne, of Bristol, who is said to have exhorted King Henry VIII. "with very weighty and substantial reasons to set forth a discoverie even to the North Pole," which voyage, as would appear from the Chronicles of Hall and Grafton, actually took place; for they inform us that King Henry VIII. sent two faire ships well manned and victualled, having in them divers cunning men to seek strange regions, and so they set forth out of the Thames the 20th day of May, in the 19th yeere of his raigne, which was the yere of our Lord 1527."* Hakluyt took great pains to discover who these cunning men were, but all he could learn was that one of the ships was called the DOMINUS VOBISCUM, and that a canon of St. Paul's, in London, a great mathematician and wealthy man, went therein himself in person; that having sailed very far north-westward, one of the ships was cast away on entering into a dangerous gulph, about the great opening between the north parts of Newfoundland and Meta incognita or Greenland, and the other returned home about the beginning of October: "and this," says Hakluyt, "is all that I can hitherto learne or finde out of this voyage, by reason of the great negligence of

* Chronicles quoted by Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 129.

the writers of those times, who should have used more care in preserving of the memories of the worthy actes of our nation."*

THE TRINITIE AND THE MINION. 1536.

This voyage, we are told by Hakluyt, was set forth by Master Hore, of London, "a man of goodly stature and of great courage, and given to the studie of cosmographie." Assisted by the king's favour, several gentlemen were encouraged to accompany him in a voyage of discovery upon the north-west parts of America, many of whom were of the Inns of Court and of Chancery; "and divers others of good worship, desirous to see the strange things of the world. The whole number were about sixe

that went in the two tall ships score persons, whereof thirty were gentlemen, which were all mustered in warlike maner at Gravesend, and after the receiving of the sacrament they embarked themselves in the ende of Aprill, 1536."†

After a tedious passage of two months they reached in safety Cape Breton; and shaping a course from thence to the north-east came to Penguin island, very full of rocks and stones, whereon they went and found it full of great

* Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. iii. p. 129.

+ Idem.

foules white and gray, as big as geese, and they saw infinite numbers of their egges.' These birds they skinned and found to be good and nourishing meat, and the great store of bears, both black and white, was no mean resource, and, as we are told, no bad food.

Mr. Oliver Dawbeney, merchant of London, who was one of the adventurers on board the MINION, related to Mr. Richard Hakluyt the following curious circumstances concerning this early voyage:

"That after their arrivall in Newfoundland, and having bene there certaine dayes at ancre, and not having yet seene any of the naturall people of the countrey, the same Dawbeney walking one day on the hatches spied a boate with savages of those parts, rowing downe the bay toward them, to gaze upon the ship and our people, and taking vewe of their comming aloofe, he called to such as were under the hatches, and willed them to come up if they would see the natural people of the countrey, that they had so long and so much desired to see: whereupon they came up and tooke viewe of the savages rowing toward them and their ship, and upon the viewe they manned out a ship-boat to meet them and to take them. But they spying our ship-boat making towards them, returned with maine force and fled into an island that lay up in the bay or river there, and our men pursued them into the island and the savages fledde and escaped;

but our men found a fire and the side of a beare, on a wooden spit, left at the same by the savages that were fled.

"There, in the same place, they found a boote of leather, garnished on the outward side of the calfe with certaine brave trailes, as it were of rawe silke, and found a certaine great warme mitten. And these caryed with them, they returned to their shippe, not finding the savages, nor seeing any thing else besides the soyle, and the things growing in the same, which chiefly were store of firre and pine trees.

"And further the said Mr. Dawbeney told him, that lying there they grew into great want of victuals, and that there they found small reliefe, more than that they had from the nest of an osprey, that brought hourely to her yong great plentie of divers sorts of fishes. But such was the famine that encreased amongst them from day to day, that they were forced to seeke to relieve themselves of raw herbes and rootes that they sought on the maine: but the famine encreasing, and the reliefe of herbes being to little purpose to satisfie their insatiable hunger, in the fieldes and deserts here and there, the fellow killed his mate while he stooped to take up a roote for his reliefe, and cutting out pieces of his bodie whom he had murthered, broyled the same on the coles and greedily devoured them.

the officers knew not what had become of them; and it fortuned that one of the company, driven with hunger to seeke abroade for reliefe, found out in the fieldes the savour of broyled flesh, and fell out with one for that he would suffer him and his fellowes to sterve, enjoying plentie as he thought; and this matter growing to cruell speaches, he that had the broyled meate burst out into these wordes:-If thou wouldest needes know, the broyled meate I had was a piece of such a man's buttocke. The report of this brought to the ship, the captaine found what became of those that were missing, and was perswaded that some of them were neither devoured with wilde beastes nor yet destroyed with savages: and hereupon he stood up and made a notable oration, containing howe much these dealings offended the Almightie, and vouched the Scriptures from first to last what God had, in cases of distresse, done for them that called upon him, and told them that the power of the Almighty was then no lesse, then in al former. time it had bene. And added, that if it had not pleased God to have holpen them in that distresse, that it had been better to have perished in body, and to have lived everlastingly, then to have relieved for a poore time their mortal bodyes, and to be condemned everlastingly both body and soule to the unquenchable fire of hell. And thus having ended to that effect, he began to exhort to repentance, and besought all the company to pray,