[223]. Exchequer T. R. Misc. Bks., vol. x. The entries relating to Spert all resemble the following: ‘The herry gce diew. Delyv’de the xxvij daye of September anno dicto [7th year of Henry VIII] to thoms spte for the herry gce diew iiij cabulls....’
‘The herry gce diew, the katryn fortune and the gabryell riall. Delyv’de to thoms spte [and the other two masters] the vijth. daye of ap’ll anno dicto [7th year of the reign] vj barells tarre.’ In no case is any other person but Spert designated as the master of the Henry Grace à Dieu.
[224]. His knighthood has been disputed, but two official documents speak of him as Sir Thomas Spert (Letters and Papers, vi, No. 196. xvii, No. 1258).
[225]. Letters and Papers, many references.
[226]. Wardens’ Manuscript Accounts of the Drapers’ Company, vol. vii, 86–7. Printed in extenso in Harrisse, Discovery of North America, iii. 747.
[227]. This passage has been regarded as fatal to the connexion of Sebastian Cabot with a voyage in 1516, and even to his claims to have made discoveries under Henry VII. As regards the former, it is quite compatible with an expedition which returned without discovering land, which is precisely what Eden hints at. On the latter point it is to be remarked that the third Cabot voyage (that of Sebastian in search of the North-West Passage) ended in failure and obscurity and was overshadowed by the expeditions of the Bristol syndicates; thus it is not surprising that the London Drapers were able to profess a very convenient ignorance of it. They could hardly do the same about John Cabot in view of the notoriety of his discovery in 1497, and the brilliance of his reception in London in that year.
[228]. Letters and Papers, iv, part i, p. 154.
[229]. Venetian Cal., iii, No. 607.
[230]. Agostino Giustiniani, Castigatissimi Annali, Genova, 1537, lib. vi, f. cclxxviii. Quoted by Harrisse in John and Sebastian Cabot (1896), pp. 337–8.
[231]. Hakluyt, ii. 159–63.