From various documents and statements we may conclude that fresh expeditions were sent out from Bristol in 1501 and the following years; but these were Anglo-Portuguese undertakings and may have been occasioned, at any rate in part, by the discoveries of the Portuguese, although, of course, the knowledge of Cabot’s voyage may have had some significance.[322]
On March 19 (28), 1501, Henry VII. issued letters patent to Richard Warde, Thomas Ashehurst and John Thomas, merchants of Bristol, who were in partnership in the enterprise with three Portuguese from the Azores, John and Francis Fernandus [i.e., João and Francisco Fernandez] and John Gunsolus [João Gonzales ?].[323] They were given the right for ten years “to explore all Islands, Countries, Regions, and Provinces whatever, in the Eastern, Western, Southern, and Northern Seas, heretofore unknown to Christians,” and all former privileges of this kind, granted to “any foreigner or foreigners,” were expressly cancelled. This last provision must refer to the letters patent granted to Cabot in 1496 and 1498.
Expedition in 1502
That this new expedition from Bristol really took place and returned before January 1502, seems to result from the accounts of Henry VII.’s privy purse, where on January 7, 1502, there is an entry: “To men of Bristoll that found Thisle £5.”[324] In 1502 there was possibly a new expedition, as in the same accounts there is an entry of September [24], 1502: “To the merchants of Bristoll that have bene in the Newfounde Lande, £20.”[324] According to a document of December 6, 1503, Henry VII. further granted on September 26, 1502, to the two Portuguese, ffranceys ffernandus [Francisco Fernandez] and John Guidisalvus [Gonzales ?] a yearly pension of ten pounds each, for the service they had done to the King’s “singler pleasur as capitaignes unto the new founde lande.”
Hakluyt states (1582) in “Divers Voyages” [1850, p. 23], after Robert Fabyan’s Chronicle, that in the seventeenth year of the reign of Henry VII. [i.e., August 22, 1501, to August 21, 1502][325]
“were brought unto the king three men, taken in the new founde Iland, that before I [i.e., Fabyan ?] spake of in William Purchas time, being Maior.[326] These were clothed in beastes skinnes, and ate rawe fleshe, and spake such speech that no man coulde understand them, and in their demeanour like to bruite beastes, whom the king kept a time after. Of the which vpon two yeeres past after I [i.e., Fabyan] saw two apparelled after the maner of Englishmen, in Westminster pallace, which at that time I coulde not discerne from Englishemen, till I was learned what they were. But as for speech, I heard none of them vtter one worde.”[327]
These natives must have been brought back from the expedition of 1501 or from that of 1502 (if the latter returned before August 21 ?). They were most likely Eskimo, since Indians with their darker skin could scarcely have looked like Englishmen. It might even be supposed that they came from Greenland, and were descendants of the Norsemen there, in which case their resemblance to Englishmen is most naturally explained.
North-western portion of Robert Thorne’s map, of 1527 (copy of a Spanish map of the world)
English voyage in 1503