Navarette, writing of Hojeda’s first voyage, says it is certain that the explorer encountered some Englishmen near Coquibacoa on the coast of Venezuela;[[66]] but he gives no authority for the statement, and such authority has been searched for in vain. Possibly the patent quoted above was the origin of his assertion. In any case the patent deserves serious consideration, showing, as it does, that the Spanish Government was genuinely alarmed at the progress of English exploration on the mainland of America. If it is to be credited that Hojeda did encounter an English expedition on his first voyage, that expedition must have been Sebastian Cabot’s, as the dates do not allow of the possibility that Hojeda ran across John Cabot in 1497 or 1498. If Hojeda met Sebastian Cabot, it is most unlikely, in view of the latter’s accounts of his voyage, that it was on the coast of Venezuela. The most probable time and place of the intersection of the routes of the two explorers was in the autumn of 1499 and in the vicinity of the island of Hispaniola. Hojeda seems to have arrived at that place on September 5, staying there for a considerable time before resuming his voyage; and it is quite possible that Sebastian Cabot touched there on his homeward passage from Florida, although he would naturally not mention the circumstance in after days when in Spanish service.

But, however interesting these possibilities may be, there is not sufficient proof for them to be regarded as facts, and their truth or falsity does not affect the credit due to Sebastian Cabot for his determination to turn his father’s disillusionment to account. A man of good education, and of a subtle, reflective mind, he realized, as did other cosmographers much earlier than is commonly supposed,[[67]] that the new-found land was veritably a separate continent, and lay as an obstacle between Europe and the coveted spices of the East. Hence his voyage into the Arctic—the first voyage in search of the North-West Passage, a quest which has formed an integral part of English history almost to our own time, and of which the first act has been buried under such an accumulation of misunderstanding and controversy as to pass almost unrecognized. Whether the voyage took place in 1499 or later; exactly how far north Sebastian reached; whether he actually entered Hudson’s Strait; and whether he encountered Hojeda in the West Indies after giving up the northern quest, are points which cannot be decided with the evidence at present at disposal. Certain it is, however, that his was the first attempt to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific, an achievement which Magellan was to accomplish by a different route twenty years later.

Much has been made of Sebastian Cabot’s suppression of his father’s discoveries. It cannot be denied that he showed a strange want of generosity on the point, his first recorded reference to them being found in the map of 1544. But the neglect to mention a fact which is common knowledge is not so serious a fault as the withholding a secret generally unknown. From the references to John Cabot made by Alonzo de Santa Cruz, it would seem that Charles V was perfectly aware that John, and not Sebastian, was the original discoverer, as indeed any one who troubled to inquire into the matter could hardly fail to be when so many contemporaries of the fact were still living. The wretchedly slipshod and perfunctory methods of the sixteenth-century historians are certainly as much to blame as Sebastian, who had a financial motive for taking advantage of the confusion when he claimed, in his old age, the gratitude of England for the services of his family.

That Sebastian Cabot was nothing but a charlatan and a ‘glib reciter of other men’s tales’ is highly improbable. If he had been such, he would surely have appropriated the 1497 and 1498 voyages to his own credit, and would have made his story agree closely with all the undoubted details of those exploits, with which he was necessarily familiar. If he had really intended to represent himself as the sole discoverer of America, what possible motive could he have had in arousing suspicion by altering the number of ships from one or five, as the case might be, to two; in maintaining the deception well knowing that his master, Charles V, and many others were cognisant of it; and finally in giving his whole case away and acknowledging himself a liar by publishing the inscription on the map of 1544? His real fault was his egotistic silence on achievements which were not his own, a fault which served his turn at the time, but afterwards brought its own punishment by damaging his reputation to an even greater extent than he deserved.

Most modern writers[[68]] have assumed that he claimed to have commanded one or both of the first two voyages, and they have put forward, as an explanation of the discrepancies, the suggestion that he named the Arctic as the scene of his chief efforts in order to please his Spanish masters. The latter were (on this hypothesis) bound to admit that England had made some discoveries, but preferred to have them located in a frigid and comparatively useless region rather than in more temperate zones. The obvious and fatal objection to this reasoning is that Sebastian, while asserting that he had been in the Arctic, also claimed to have coasted down to Virginia or Florida during the very same voyage, thus giving England just as good a title to those regions by right of discovery as if his first landfall had been made there.

The conclusion is, therefore, that there were three distinct Cabot voyages of which evidence has survived; the first two, under John Cabot, made upon a false conception, and the third, under his son, upon a true conception, of the nature of the newly discovered continent; and that the search for the North-West Passage was begun by Sebastian Cabot.

CHAPTER V
AN EARLY COLONIAL PROJECT

After the Cabot voyages, which were, financially, a failure, nothing more is heard of American enterprises originating in England until March 19, 1501. On that date Henry VII granted a patent ‘to our beloved subjects Richard Ward, Thomas Ashehurst, and John Thomas, merchants of our town of Bristol, and to our beloved João Fernandes, Francisco Fernandes and João Gonsalves,[[69]] squires born in the islands of Surrys (Azores) under the obedience of the King of Portugal’, giving them authority to explore any regions of the earth for the purpose of discovering any countries hitherto unknown to Christians. The patentees were further empowered to set up the king’s standard on all places by them newly discovered, and to occupy such places as his vassals and governors, making laws and enforcing the obedience of all who should resort to those regions. During ten years following the grant of the patent they were to have a monopoly of trade with their discoveries, other persons being forbidden to engage in it without obtaining their licence and that of the king, and then only on condition of paying to the patentees one-twentieth part of the value of the goods shipped. Certain exemptions from customs duties on small quantities of goods were granted to the masters and mariners employed by the patentees, who were themselves entitled to import one shipload of merchandise duty free at some time within the first four years after the grant of the patent. If foreigners persisted in intruding into the dominions of the patentees the latter were given leave to expel and punish them at their discretion, even if they were subjects of a friendly power. They were also granted, jointly and singly, the rank and privileges of Admiral, with power to exercise the same in the new lands. A significant clause provided that no foreigner, under colour of any concession formerly granted under the Great Seal, should resort to the new lands without the licence of the patentees. Finally, the three Portuguese mentioned in the patent were to be naturalized and have all the rights and privileges of Englishmen, except that they were to continue to pay customs duties on the same scale as foreigners.[[70]]

A study of the terms of the charter, the original of which is in Latin and of great length, shows that the foundation of a permanent colony, and not merely the dispatch of a trading expedition, was contemplated. The clauses, much elaborated in the original, relative to the rights of legislation, power to exclude foreigners, and administrative authority of the patentees, all point to this conclusion, although there is very little evidence that they were ever carried into effect. The locality is not mentioned, but it must have been somewhere on the coast of Greenland or North America between the Arctic Circle and the extremity of the peninsula of Florida, limits which are sufficiently wide, but which are necessitated by the extreme vagueness and the contradictory nature of the indications of the site of the projected settlement. The permission to expel foreigners by force of arms is interesting as showing that Henry VII, on paper at least, was in a less conciliatory mood than usual towards the Spaniards, at whom and the Portuguese the clause was levelled. The express revocation of any previous grants under the great seal could only apply to the patents obtained by the Cabots in 1496 and 1498, which were now annulled, most probably on account of the failure of those navigators to achieve any commercial success by their voyages.

The somewhat incongruous combination of Bristol merchants and Portuguese adventurers may be accounted for by the assumption that the former provided the capital and the business management of the affair, while the latter supplied the navigating skill and experience of similar enterprises. João Fernandes, at least, possessed such experience. On October 28, 1499, he had been granted a patent by King Manuel of Portugal, authorizing him to make voyages to the North-West and giving him the captaincy of any islands he might discover; and certain expressions used in another patent obtained by him in 1508 imply that he had previously made voyages in the same direction.[[71]] The Portuguese, in general, thanks to their persistent attempts to find an eastern route to Cathay, were much more advanced in the art of conducting exploring expeditions than were the English of that period, and they had very quickly followed in the track of the Cabots to the coast of North America itself. The two brothers, Gaspar and Miguel Corte Real, as important in Portuguese history as the Cabots in our own, perished in the North-West in 1501 and 1502 respectively; while Portuguese fishermen flocked to the Baccalaos, or Newfoundland banks, in such numbers that in 1506 an import tax was levied in Portugal on fish from that region.[[72]] On the other hand, England was in its infancy as a maritime nation, and its sailors, using inferior ships, charts, and navigating methods, had been hitherto accustomed only to coasting voyages and very short open-sea passages, such as were necessitated by the trade to Iceland and Spain.