Grant from the Privy Purse of Henry VII, August 10, 1497, ‘To him who found the New Isle, £10’.[[48]]
Pension grant of £20 per annum to John Cabot, December 13, 1497.
‘Henry by the grace of God, etc. to John, Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury etc., Our Chancellor, greeting. We let you wit that we, for certain considerations us specially moving, have given and granted unto our well-beloved John Calbot of the parts of Venice an annuity or annual rent of £20 sterling, to be had and yearly perceived from the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lady last past, during our pleasure, of our customs and subsidies coming and growing in our port of Bristol, by the hands of our customers there for the time being, at Michaelmas and Easter, by even portions. Wherefore we will and charge you that under our Great Seal ye do make thereupon our letters patent in good and effectual form. Given under our Privy Seal, at our palace of Westminster, the 15th day of December, the 13th year of our Reign.’[[49]]
Together with this may be taken the authorization for the immediate payment of the pension, which would seem to have been delayed, dated February 22, 1498.[[50]] Both these documents are printed by Mr. C. R. Beazley in his John and Sebastian Cabot (1898).
Memoranda of loans of £20 to Launcelot Thirkill of London, ‘going towards the new island’, March 22, 1498; £30 to Thomas Bradley and Launcelot Thirkill, ‘going to the New Isle’, April 1, 1498; and 40 shillings and five pence to John Carter, ‘going to the new isle’.[[51]]
Launcelot Thirkill’s name appears again in a document of 1501, which shows that he returned safely from this voyage (the second), if indeed he actually performed it.
In this category also falls the important discovery made in 1897 among the Westminster Chapter Archives,[[52]] consisting of the accounts of the Customers of Bristol for the years 1497–8 and 1498–9. These accounts show that John Cabot’s pension of £20 was paid during the years named. He is mentioned by name, and the customers deduct the amount of the pension from the total receipts which they hand over to the Exchequer officers.
A manuscript chronicle, of unknown authorship, in the British Museum,[[53]] contains a reference to the second voyage, ostensibly written before its return:
'This yere (1498) the Kyng at the besy request and supplicacion of a straunger Venisian, which by a chart made hymself expert in knowyng of the world, caused the Kyng to manne a ship wt. vytaill and other necessaries for to seche an Iland wheryn the said straunger surmysed to be grete comodities. Wt which ship by the Kyng’s grace so rygged went iij or iiij moo owte of Bristowe, the said straunger beyng conditor of the said fleete, wheryn divers m’chants as well of London as Bristow aventured goods and sleight m’chandises, which dep’ted from the west cuntrey in the begynnyng of somer but to this p’sent moneth came nevir knowledge of their exployt.'
Stow and Hakluyt both quote from a manuscript chronicle, then in the possession of the former, but now lost. Hakluyt says it was written by Robert Fabyan. Stow’s version (1615 edition, p. 481), almost identical with Hakluyt’s except as regards the name of the explorer, runs thus: