Huic vitam dederat puero Bristollia quondam,
Londinum hoc tumulo clauserat atque diem,
Ornavit studiis patriam, virtutibus auxit,
Gymnasium erexit sumptibus ipse suis.
Lector quisquis ades requiem cineri precor optes,
Supplex et precibus numina flecte tuis.
Obiit 1532, aetatis vero suae anno 40.[[250]]
Nicholas Thorne outlived his brother several years, taking a prominent part in the affairs of his native city. He was a friend of Thomas Cromwell’s, and engaged in business transactions on his behalf. In 1536–7 he built a merchant vessel for Cromwell, which was named the Saviour and made her first voyage to Andalusia.[[251]] He was evidently of the Catholic party in Bristol, to judge from some very insulting and disparaging references to him in a Protestant letter of 1539.[[252]] In 1544 he became mayor of Bristol, and in the following year we find him appealing on behalf of some English merchants who had suffered ill-treatment at San Sebastian.[[253]] He died in 1546 at the age of fifty,[[254]] leaving two sons, of whom one was named Nicholas.
One other voyage to the North-West remains to be chronicled under Henry VIII. In the year 1536 a certain Master Hore of London, a man learned in cosmography, and apparently of good position and fortune, was possessed with the desire to make a voyage to North America. He was joined by others of the same mind, including Armigil Wade or Ward, who afterwards held an official position under Henry VIII and Edward VI. With the king’s consent and good will two ships, the Trinity and the Minion, were fitted out, and 120 persons embarked, of whom 30 were gentlemen, many of them being lawyers of London. They departed from Gravesend at the end of April 1536.
Hakluyt,[[255]] the authority for this voyage, received a personal relation of it from Thomas Butts, one of the participators, who survived until his time; and the editor’s cousin, also named Richard Hakluyt, furnished him with an account he had personally received from Oliver Dawbeny, another survivor. After leaving Gravesend the explorers were more than two months at sea before reaching Cape Breton. Thence they coasted north-eastwards along the Newfoundland shore, visiting an island which they called the Island of Penguins, on account of the numbers of birds they saw there. Black and white bears were also encountered. They failed to get into touch with the natives, who fled at their approach, and soon their stock of food became exhausted. As time went on the agonies of famine became so acute that, when scattered over the country in search of food, some of the members of the party were killed by others and their flesh cooked and eaten. Hore did his best to stop these excesses, gathering the whole company and exhorting them to perish rather than ‘be condemned everlastingly both body and soul to the unquenchable fire of hell’. Nevertheless, they were again on the point of casting lots to see who should be killed when a French ship arrived in the bay, well stocked with food. She was attacked and captured by the starving Englishmen, who victualled themselves and set sail immediately for home. Meeting with much ice on the way, they arrived at St. Ives at the end of October. Butts, as he told Hakluyt, who made a journey of 200 miles to obtain his narrative, was so changed by hunger and misery that his parents failed to recognize him.