The progress of discovery in the sixteenth century produced numerous historians to narrate its annals. These men, living for the most part in Spain and Italy, had to turn for their information, in default of access to State archives, to such survivors of the exploits themselves as they were able to get into touch with. John Cabot had died soon after his great discovery, and, since his men were for the most part English, not one of them came in contact with any of the historians of southern Europe. The latter had therefore to seek information from Sebastian Cabot, his second son, who entered the service of Spain in 1512, lived in that country for five and thirty years, and returned to pass the last decade of his life in England, dying at a great age in 1557. Sebastian Cabot, then, not only moulded the foreign version of his story, but also in England was the sole link between the late fifteenth century, when men of letters took no interest in ocean voyages, and the mid-sixteenth, when the country was beginning to realize that her future lay upon the water. Thus the first ‘expansionist’ writer in England, Richard Eden, sat at Sebastian’s feet and drank in his stories of ancient discovery, which in this way secured acceptance as the whole truth and nothing but the truth until the sceptical nineteenth century began to institute a more searching inquiry.
Sebastian Cabot was a vain egoist, fond of giving vent to mysterious, bombastic utterances containing a maximum of self-praise and a minimum of hard fact. So, when appealed to by the historians for information on North American explorations, he said nothing of his father’s two voyages of 1497 and 1498, in which he may have taken part, and the details of which he must have been familiar with, but described instead a subsequent expedition, which he had himself commanded, in search of a north-west passage round America to Asia. The sixteenth-century histories therefore contain no mention of John Cabot, and the accounts found therein have no bearing whatever on his two voyages.[[43]] A recognition of this fact is essential because it has been very generally believed that there were only two Cabot voyages, whereas there were actually three; and that Sebastian, in describing himself as commander of a north-western expedition, was talking of the original discovery in 1497 or of the following voyage in 1498, and taking the credit of them to himself. In reality, Sebastian Cabot was telling the truth in describing his own voyage, and merely suppressing the truth in saying nothing of his father’s. In other words, he was not so great a liar as he has been painted.
Turning first to John Cabot’s discovery of North America, by him thought to be eastern Asia, in 1497, and his second voyage to the same region in 1498, it will be convenient first to state the sources of information, and afterwards to examine the conclusions to which they lead.
On March 5, 1496, Letters Patent were granted to the Cabot family by Henry VII, to the following effect:
Permission to John Cabottus and to Ludovicus, Sebastianus, and Sanctus his sons to take five ships at their own charges, to navigate in any seas to the east, north, or west, and to occupy and possess any new found lands hitherto unvisited by Christians. They were to voyage only from and to the port of Bristol, and were to be exempt from the payment of customs on goods brought from the new lands. No other subjects of the king were to trade to the new lands without licence from the Cabots. In return for these privileges one-fifth of all profits were to be paid to the king.
News of the project reached the ears of de Puebla, the Spanish ambassador in England, who transmitted it to his sovereigns. His letter to them is lost, but their reply, dated March 28, 1496, was as follows:
‘You write that a person like Columbus has come to England for the purpose of persuading the king to enter into an undertaking similar to that of the Indies, without prejudice to Spain and Portugal. He is quite at liberty. But we believe that the undertaking was thrown in the way of the King of England by the King of France with the premeditated intention of distracting him from his other business. Take care that the King of England be not deceived on this or in any other matter. The French will try as hard as they can to lead him into such undertakings, but they are very uncertain enterprises, and must not be gone into at present. Besides, they cannot be executed without prejudice to us and to the King of Portugal.’[[44]]
The remainder of 1496 was consumed in preparations or, less probably, an unsuccessful voyage was made in that year. In any case, John Cabot set out in 1497, found land on the other side of the ocean, and was back by the beginning of August. The following letters describe the voyage:
Lorenzo Pasqualigo to his brothers in Venice, August 23, 1497.
'The Venetian, our countryman, who went with a ship from Bristol in quest of new islands, is returned, and says that 700 leagues hence he discovered land, the territory of the Grand Cham. He coasted for 300 leagues and landed; saw no human beings, but he has brought hither to the king certain snares which had been set to catch game, and a needle for making nets; he also found some felled trees, wherefore he supposed that there were inhabitants, and returned to his ship in alarm.