1488 The King of Scotland, James III, killed by his subjects. Cape of Good Hope discovered.
1489 Maps and sea charts first brought into England by Bartholomew Columbus.
1491 The Greek language first introduced into England.
1492 3rd August, Columbus set sail from Palos, a port of Spain, and on the 12th of October, to his unspeakable gratification, he made his first discovery in the New World. This was one of the Bahama Islands, called by the natives Guanahani, named by Columbus St. Salvador, and afterwards, by some unpardonable caprice, called by the English Cat Island. He landed the same day, took possession of it in the name of the Spanish sovereigns, and assumed the titles of Admiral and Viceroy, which had been awarded to him before he sailed from Europe.
1493 15th March. Columbus arrived in Spain after a stormy and dangerous voyage, having taken not quite seven months and a-half to accomplish this momentous enterprize.
1494 Poyning’s law, which enacted that the statutes in England, respecting the English, should be observed in Ireland likewise, first instituted by Sir Edward Poyning.
1495 Cicely, Duchess of York, mother to King Edward IV, died, being very old, who had lived to see three Princes born of her body, crowned, and four murdered.
1497 Perkin Warbeck besieged Exeter. The passage to the Indies by the way of the Cape of Good Hope discovered. 3rd July, John Cabot discovered Newfoundland. He sailed from the Port of Bristol, in the spring of 1497, and, on the 3rd of July, discovered the coast of Labrador. The opposite Island, now called Newfoundland, they called St. Johns, having landed there on St. John’s day. To the mainland they gave the name of Terra prima vista—or Primavista (first seen). The English navigators thus reached the continent of North America only five years after Columbus had discovered the West Indies, and more than a year before he had landed on the continent or main land.
1499 Perkin Warbeck taken and hung at Tyburn, and the last Earl of the Plantagenet line was beheaded on Tower-hill, November 28th.