According to the Cottonian Chronicle, the King
“at the besy request and supplicacion of a Straunger venisian [i.e., John Cabot], ... caused to manne a ship ... for to seche an Iland wheryn the said Straunger surmysed to be grete commodities,”[319] and it was accompanied by three or four other ships of Bristol, “the said Straunger” [i.e., Cabot] being leader of this “Flete, wheryn dyuers merchauntes as well of London as Bristowe aventured goodes and sleight merchaundises, which departed from the West Cuntrey in the begynnyng of Somer, but to this present moneth came nevir Knowlege of their exployt.”[320]
Fabyan’s account
Hakluyt, in “Divers Voyages” (1582) [cf. Hakluyt, 1850, p. 23], has a rather fuller version of this account, quoted from Robert Fabyan, where we read that the ships from Bristol were
“fraught with sleight and grosse merchandizes as course cloth, Caps, laces, points, and other trifles, and so departed from Bristowe in the beginning of May: of whom in this Maior’s time returned no tidings.”[321]
“This Mayor” would be William Purchas, who was Lord Mayor of London until October 28 (November 6, N.S.), 1498. Thus, if this is correct, the expedition had not yet returned in the late autumn.
John Cabot probably never returned from the voyage of 1498
The information contained in Ayala’s letter, that one of Cabot’s ships had put in to Ireland, is the last certain intelligence we have of this expedition, which was looked forward to with such great hopes. John Cabot now disappears completely and unaccountably from history, and his discovery, which the year before had attracted so much attention, seems to have been more or less forgotten in the succeeding years, and is never referred to in the later letters of the Spanish Ambassadors in London. It may, therefore, seem reasonable to suppose that the expedition disappeared without leaving a trace. The probability of this is confirmed by the fact that two years and a half later, in March 1501, Henry VII. again granted letters patent, for the discovery of lands, to three merchants of Bristol and three Portuguese, without mentioning Cabot; it is merely stated that all former privileges of a similar kind were cancelled. But according to some old account books from Bristol, found at Westminster Abbey, John Cabot’s royal pension of £20 a year was paid as late as the administrative year beginning September 29, 1498. This, as Harrisse and others think, shows that Cabot returned from the voyage and was still alive in that year. But this seems to be uncertain evidence. The money need not have been paid to him personally; it may have been paid to his wife or his sons or other representatives during his absence on the voyage, and we cannot conclude anything certain from it. As the pension is not entered in the following years, it seems rather to show that Cabot was really lost, and the money was only paid during the first year of his absence.
It has been supposed that the following is another proof of the participators in the voyage of 1498 having returned: the accounts of Henry VII.’s privy purse for 1498 show that on March 22 and April 1 the King advanced money (sums of £20, £3, and 40s. 5d., in all about £650 in the money of the present day) to Launcelot Thirkill (who seems to have had a ship of his own), Thomas Bradley and John Carter, who were all going to “the new Isle.” Probably these men may have fitted out their own ships to accompany Cabot’s expedition; but we do not know whether they sailed. This is probably the same Launcelot Thirkill who, according to an old document, was in London on June 6, 1501, when he and three others whose names are given (perhaps his sureties) were “bounden in ij obligations to pay” £20 to the King before next Whitsuntide. Possibly it was this loan received from the King for the voyage, which he then had to repay. If he really started, it may be supposed that his ship was the one that put back to Ireland; and this document is therefore no certain proof of any of the other four ships having ever returned. For that matter they may all have been lost in the same gale. But in the year 1501 the ship that returned from Gaspar Corte-Real’s expedition is reported to have brought back to Lisbon a broken gilt sword of Italian workmanship from the east coast of North America; and it is also stated that two Venetian silver rings had been seen on a native boy from that country. It has been assumed that these objects may have belonged to some of the participators in John Cabot’s expedition of 1498, which in that case must have reached America, and there met with some disaster.
It is difficult to say more of this voyage. That John Cabot should have returned after having reached America, and after having sailed a greater or less distance along the coast without finding the riches he was in search of, appears to me unlikely. Such an assumption would provide no explanation of the complete silence about him. As the foreign Ministers had followed this expedition with so much attention, we might surely expect them to say something about its having disappointed the great expectations that were formed of it; and in any case it was unlikely that the whole should be buried in complete silence, which, on the other hand, is easily comprehensible if nothing more was heard of the expedition, since it may all have been forgotten for other things which claimed attention. Thus the story of Giovanni Caboto, the discoverer of the North American continent, ends, as it began, in obscurity. He was too early with his discovery. England had not yet developed her trade and navigation sufficiently to be able to follow it up and avail herself of it; this was not to come until about eighty years later.