Relations of England to the views of Columbus.
While all this suspense and amorous intrigue were perplexing the ardent theorist, he is supposed to have dispatched his brother Bartholomew to England to disclose his projects to Henry VII. Hakluyt, in his Westerne Planting, tells us that it "made much for the title of the kings of England" to the New World that Henry VII. gave a ready acceptance to the theory of Columbus as set forth somewhat tardily by his brother Bartholomew, when escaping from the detention of the pirates, he was at last able, on February 13, 1488, to offer in England his sea-card, embodying Christopher's theories, for the royal consideration.
The Cabots in England.
William Castell, in his Short Discovery of America, says that Henry VII. "unhappily refused to be at any charge in the discovery, supposing the learned Columbus to build castles in the air." It is a common story that Henry finally brought himself to accede to the importunities of Bartholomew, but only at a late day, and after Christopher had effected his conquest of the Spanish Court. Columbus himself is credited with saying that Henry actually wrote him a letter of acceptance. This epistle was very likely a fruition of the new impulses to oceanic discovery which the presence, a little later, of the Venetian Cabots, was making current among the English sailors; for John Cabot and his sons, one of whom, Sebastian, being at that time a youth of sixteen or seventeen, had, according to the best testimony, established a home in Bristol, not far from 1490.
If the report of the Spanish envoy in England to his sovereigns is correct as to dates, it was near this time that the Bristol merchants were renewing their quests oceanward for the islands of Brazil and the Seven Cities. We have seen that these islands with others had for some time appeared on the conjectural charts of the Atlantic, and very likely they had appeared on the sea-card shown by Bartholomew Columbus to Henry VII. These efforts may perhaps have been in a measure instigated by that fact. At all events, any hazards of further western exploration could be met with greater heart if such stations of progress could be found in mid ocean. Of the report of all this which Bartholomew may have made to his brother we know absolutely nothing, and he seems not to have returned to Spain till after a sojourn in France which ended in 1494.
Columbus invited back to Portugal.
It was believed by Irving that Columbus, having opened a correspondence with the Portuguese king respecting a return to the service of that country, had received from that monarch an epistle, dated March 20, 1488, in which he was permitted to come back, with the offer of protection against any suit of civil or criminal nature, and that this had been declined. We are left to conjecture of what suits of either kind he could have been apprehensive.
Humboldt commends the sagacity of Navarrete in discerning that it was not so much the persuasion of Diego de Deza which kept Columbus at this time from accepting such royal offers, as the illicit connection which he had formed in Cordoba with Doña Beatrix Enriquez, who before the summer was over had given birth to a son.
On the other hand, that the permission was not neglected seems proved by a memorandum made by Columbus's own hand in a copy of Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville, where, under date of December, 1488, "at Lisbon," he speaks of the return of Diaz from his voyage to the Cape of Good Hope. This proof is indeed subject to the qualification that Las Casas has considered the handwriting of the note to be that of Bartholomew Columbus, but Harrisse has no question of its identity with the chirography of Columbus. This last critic ventures the conjecture that it was in some way to settle the estate of his wife that Columbus at this time visited Portugal.
Spanish subsidies withheld.